The Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India gas pipeline that is under construction remains attractive to Delhi. It was noted by the expert Sherzod Abdulkhasanov in the article “The Interests of India in Central Asia”, published on the independent Information and Analytical Portal “polit-asia.kz”.
The expert notes that India’s key long-term strategic interests in Central Asia include accessing energy resources uranium, natural gas, oil, and coal. In his opinion, a goal of India’s energy security policy is to reduce its overdependence on crude oil from the unstable Persian Gulf region by diversifying its sources of crude oil.
Further, having analyzed Delhi’s interests in developing partnership with Ashgabat, the expert notes that “Turkmenistan, which holds the world’s fourth-largest reserves of natural gas, is primarily of significance to India because of the long-planned Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India natural gas pipeline.”
According to him, the TAPI pipeline could ultimately provide energy-dependent India with natural gas. in this end, Sherzod Abdulkhasanov underlines, the long-term implications of the completed pipeline are significant for India’s national energy security strategy.
The construction of the more than 1,800-kilometer gas pipeline with capacity to deliver up to 33 billion cubic meters of gas per year was launched in December 2015 in Turkmenistan.
According to the project, the TAPI pipeline will start from the Galkynysh gas field, largest in Turkmenistan, and will run through Herat, Farah, Helmand and Kandahar provinces in Afghanistan.
From it will go to Quetta and Multan in Pakistan; the final destination of the pipeline will be the Indian town of Fazilka, the state of Punjab, near its border with Pakistan.