Nizam Ahmed
Bangladesh has expressed its intent to join a four-nation Asian gas pipeline project to buy the energy resource form Turkmenistan by the end of 2017, sources said on Sunday.

The four-nation pipeline project has become important for the country as a similar decade-old three-nation project involving Bangladesh, India and Myanmar has virtually become non-existent following a poor response from source country, Myanmar, energy traders said.

The proposed four-nation gas pipeline project among Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India (TAPI) has come into limelight after Turkmenistan, a central Asian country of 5.5 million people bordering Afghanistan on the southeast, signed an agreement last week to sell natural gas to India and Pakistan, they said.

The agreement among Turkmenistan, Pakistan and India for sale of gas on commercial terms was signed in Avaza, a tourist resort in Turkmenistan last Wednesday.

The 1,800 kilometer-long pipeline project with its cost estimated in 2008 at $7.6 billion, will run from Turkmenistan to Pakistan and India across the provinces of Herat and Kandahar in Afghanistan.

However, a revised estimation for the construction cost of the pipeline is likely to touch some $12 billion, according to experts at the Asian Development Bank (ADB), the financier of the project.

The proposed pipeline will require to be lengthened by another 700 km, if it is to connect Bangladesh's internal gas network. Experts believe it is both feasible and possible, if all the parties agree, they said.

A yet-to-be confirmed report said relevant authorities in Bangladesh have already requested the ADB to include Bangladesh in the project.

The project is expected to be completed by the middle of 2017 if no security problems arise in Afghanistan as the US and the NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organisation) alliance are scheduled to withdraw their troops from the country by the middle of 2014, energy officials, keeping watch on the development of the pipeline project, said.

"Our interest in such a project will continue to grow as long as gas shortage persists in the country," a senior official of the energy and mineral resources division (EMRD) told the FE.

Bangladesh was interested in a tri-nation -- India, Bangladesh Myanmar -- gas pipeline as it is now pro-active on an energy network among the countries of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (Saarc).

"But it is too early to say something officially on Bangladesh's intention to join the pipeline project," the EMRD official said.

If implemented, 1.0 trillion cubic metres of gas would be transmitted to the recipient countries for 30 years, or 33 billion cubic metres a year, experts said.

A decade-old tri-nation gas-pipeline proposal to supply natural gas from Myanmar to India via Bangladesh is likely to be dropped soon, as Yangon has remained non-responsive to the proposal, energy officials said.

The proposed tri-nation gas-line project has also become 'obsolete', as Bangladesh and India could not place so far any concrete proposal to Myanmar. Yangon signed later a deal with China to sell gas from its off-shore Shwe gas-field in 2009.

After signing the deal for the China-Myanmar gas pipeline project, Myanmar became reluctant to go ahead with the tri-nation gas-line project, energy experts and diplomats said.

In 1997, a Bangladeshi private firm called Mohona Holdings first proposed the construction of a pipeline that could supply natural gas from the gas-fields of Myanmar to India through Bangladesh.

The tri-nation techno-commercial meeting with representations of all the three countries had signed a draft memorandum of understanding (MOU) in Yangon in February 2005.

Bangladesh's total gas output now is around 2,180 million cubic feet per day (mmcfd), against its own requirements for more than 2,500 mmcfd. However, the actual demand will be more higher when industries and housing units, awaiting gas connections, get connected with the national grid, consequent upon availability of more gas.