By Bruce Pannier (via Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty ) On December 13, 2015, The leaders of Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, Pakist...
By Bruce Pannier
On December 13, 2015, The leaders of Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the vice president of
India gathered near the Turkmen city of Mary to launch the
construction of the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) pipeline. It was
reminiscent of December 14, 2009, when the leaders of Turkmenistan, China,
Kazakhstan, and Uzbekistan gathered in Saman-Depe, Turkmenistan, near the Uzbek
border, to launch another gas pipeline.
There was a very
big difference in the two launches, however.
The 2009 event
in Saman-Depe marked the actual start of gas supplies from Turkmenistan,
through Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, to China. The pipeline (the first of four)
in this case was complete.
The 2015 event
was more about a hope that many feel is misplaced. Not one section of pipe has
been laid and there are formidable obstacles in financing and hazards along the
proposed route.
To understand
how difficult it would be to construct the 1,814-kilometer TAPI pipeline to
eventually carry some 33 billion cubic meters of gas from southern Turkmenistan
all the way to Fazilka, India, RFE/RL's Turkmen Service, known locally as
Azatlyk, assembled a Majlis, a panel discussion, to review the situation for
TAPI as construction begins in Turkmenistan.
Moderating the
panel was Azatlyk director Muhammad Tahir. Participating from Ottawa was Dr.
Robert Cutler, a senior research fellow with the Institute of European, Russian
& Eurasian Studies at Carleton University. William Byrd, senior Afghanistan
expert at the U.S. Institute of Peace and former country director for
Afghanistan at the World Bank joined the conversation from Washington. And I
was, of course, delighted to throw in some comments of my own.
The idea of TAPI
has been around for two decades. From the Majlis to the Qishloq Ovozi blog,
we've covered some aspects of this topic in recent months, so to keep things
"fresh" here, we'll summarize earlier information and concentrate on
newer developments.
Deteriorating
Security
The route is
fraught with peril, as Byrd noted. "Certainly the security situation is
really worrisome and the pipeline route actually goes through some of the more
insecure parts of Afghanistan, particularly in the south areas, which basically
the Taliban has a large degree of control over and also over areas where
individual warlords have some influence."
And for the last
few years, the security situation in northern Afghanistan, just across the
border from Turkmenistan has been deteriorating rapidly. Questions about security
for the pipeline start less than one kilometer inside Afghanistan from the
Turkmen border. In 2015, militant groups -- Taliban and the Islamic Movement of
Uzbekistan -- briefly captured villages right on the border with Turkmenistan.
And, Byrd added,
the situation does not improve much when the route exits Afghanistan.
"Let's also not forget," he said, "the pipeline goes through a
pretty insecure part of Pakistan as well, [Balochistan] where there's been
separatist movements for many decades and so you can't even say for sure that
the pipeline is completely secure in parts of the Pakistan route.
Byrd suggested
that, for TAPI to be built, some sort of arrangement with the Taliban, as well
as the Afghan government, would be necessary, though it was noted during the
discussion that Afghan President Ashraf Ghani had pledged a 7,000-strong force
to guard the pipeline and its construction.
Now to newer,
non-security obstacles.
At various times
during the TAPI project's history major international companies have expressed
an interest in joining, and possibly managing, the project. That is no longer
the case due largely to reasons just mentioned above.
So
Turkmenistan's state gas company Turkmengaz has promised to contribute 85
percent of the cost of building the $10-billion pipeline.
Cutler asked,
"For a country like Turkmenistan in which the gross domestic product is
about $45 billion what sense does this make?"
Cutler also
questioned the timetable. Turkmenistan's President Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov
confidently predicted at the TAPI launch that the pipeline would be functional
by 2019.
But Cutler
pointed to construction of the East-West pipeline, which runs from fields in
eastern Turkmenistan to near the Caspian coast. "TAPI is more than twice
as long and it will cost five times as much," Cutler said.
"Now recall
that this [East-West pipeline] was announced in 2008 or so; it took seven years
for this to be constructed," he added.
Cutler also
reminded us that the East-West pipeline was internal, located solely inside
Turkmenistan, whereas TAPI passes through four countries.
As Cutler
explained, "You're going to need an organizational design, you're going to
need specialists, you're going to need experts, it's not even clear, honestly,
that the Turkmenistan government…has access to…the expertise that they would
require for the construction of the pipeline."
Rising Costs
And that is only
the technical part of the project. Cutler also suggested that the $8.5 billion
the Turkmen government has pledged translates to an obligation to raise that
money by luring international investment into the project.
But, as Cutler
said, "it's equally unclear, equally doubtful, that they [the Turkmen
government] have the negotiating skills that would be required to craft a
credible, legal, institutional, and organizational-infrastructural framework
[for a pipeline project]."
And, concerning
funding, Byrd said that, in his opinion, "the interesting thing is not
related to Afghanistan but why, if this is so beneficial for India and
Pakistan, why they're not contributing almost anything at all."
As it currently
stands, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India are actually obligated to each come up
with five percent of the project's cost, so $500 million per country.
Cutler also explained
that the estimated cost of the project, today, is $10 billion. "The costs
of these projects tend to grow over time and not to diminish," and he
recalled that in 2008 the cost of TAPI was estimated at $7.6 billion.
The discussion
was not all gloom and doom, however. Valid points about the importance of the
project to the region were discussed and that importance provides some
guarantee that TAPI will not be forgotten any time soon. The panel discussed in
greater detail all these topics and other matters.
About The Blog
Qishloq Ovozi is
a blog by RFE/RL Central Asia specialist Bruce Pannier that aims to look at the
events that are shaping Central Asia and its respective countries, connect some
of the dots to shed light on why those processes are occurring, and identify
the agents of change. Content will draw on the extensive knowledge and contacts
of RFE/RL's Central Asian services but also allow scholars in the West,
particularly younger scholars who will be tomorrow’s experts on the region,
opportunities to share their views on the evolving situation at this Eurasian
crossroad. The name means "Village Voice" in Uzbek. But don't be
fooled, Qishloq Ovozi is about all of Central Asia.
Copyright (c)
2015. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio
Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave NW, Ste 400, Washington DC 20036.
