CEO of TAPI Pipeline Company Ltd Mukhammetmyrat Amanov
At the ADIPEC oil and gas conference, which is held in Abu-Dhabi from 12 to 15 November, Muhammetmyrat Amanov, chief executive officer of TAPI pipeline Company Ltd announced that the construction of Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India pipeline (TAPI project) is now estimated at $7 billion, from an initial estimate of $10 billion, the news agency TASS reports.
“$10 billion are a bit more than we estimate. For the time being the project is worth $7 billion. The optimization processes have been carried out”, TASS quotes Amanov.
According to the TAPI CEO, the Asian Development Bank and the Islamic Development Bank, which allocated $700 mln, as well as European and Turkish credit agencies have invested in the project.
The secured investments are expected to account for 70% of the total project value whereas the remaining 30% will be funded by Turkmenistan.The final decision will be made by investors in early 2019.
“The project will be launched step-by-step with the first gas volumes to be launched in Afghanistan and 24 months later in Pakistan”, Amanov concluded.
Let us recall that in May 2018 the TAPI CEO said that Turkmenistan was close to securing TAPI pipeline funding. At that time it was expected that the issue would be resolved by October 2018.
Responding to security-related question, the TAPI head said that “front-end engineering and design has been completed”, which brought together some 1,5 thousand people.
As a result, according to Amanov, “only one security-related incident has been recorded” and he assured that there are no problems in this area.
It appears that the attack by the Talibans on Farah province is implied where the TAPI pipeline is scheduled to be completed in May 2018.
The attack had been defeated only with the help of the US air force.
A week after the incident there were reports that at least five deminers, who had been clearing the TAPI gas pipeline area of IEDs were allegedly killed by Taliban insurgents in Kandahar.