The Iran-Pakistan-India (IPI) gas pipeline was viable and India would welcome participation of Russian state-owned gas giant Gazprom, according to Union minister of state of external affairs Anand Sharma.
He referred to China's "aggressive run" to reiterate that India needed natural gas for maintaining the ideal mix of energy resources and for sustaining accelerated economic growth.
"We are keen to have energy cooperation with Russia," Sharma told to English newspaper "Asian Age" on the sidelines of an international conference on India's expanding gas markets.
He was responding to the question whether Gazprom's participation in the Iran-Pakistan-India pipeline project will be useful.
Gazprom's deputy chief executive officer Alexander Ananenkov has said on the occasion of Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov's visit last week to Pakistan that Gazprom would decide on its participation in the Iran-Pakistan-India gas pipeline after examining the feasibility study provided by Pakistan.
In March 2006, Fradkov told a joint news conference with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in New Delhi that Gazprom will want to explore opportunities of meeting India's energy requirement.
He had said that Russia has experience in constructing pipelines and ways and means could be evolved to involve Moscow in the pipeline project.
He said that the ideal mix, which could sustain economic activity without degrading nature, would have to have gas in it.
"Gas and other clean sources of energy are badly needed by India for accelerated growth. There is an aggressive run globally. Even in our neighbourhood there is a race for garnering these resources and reserves," he said, indirectly referring China.
He observed that India was uniquely placed to exploit large quantities of natural gas that was available in her neighbourhood.
"We are looking at the possibilities of receiving or importing gas both at the eastern as well as the western coast," he said, alluding to the India-Pakistan-India, Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India and Burma-Bangladesh-India pipelines.
Meanwhile, Petroleum minister Murli Deora will visit Pakistan early next month to sort out differences over transit fee for the IPI gas pipeline.
The transit fee remained a thorny issue between the two countries despite an agreement to share quantum of gas from the IPI pipeline.
The two sides would discuss the issue at the ministerial-level meeting early next month, it quoted Pakistani officials as saying.
Deora has already discussed the transit fee issue at length during his meeting with Pakistan Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz on the sidelines of the SAARC Summit in New Delhi early this month during which he reportedly conveyed India's reservations over "high charges" being quoted by Islamabad.
According to officials, Iran wants to sell natural gas to India and Pakistan at $ 4.93 per million British thermal unit(at $ 60 per barrel crude oil price).
On top of this, Pakistan wants a transit fee of $ 0.49 per mBtu (10 per cent of the gas price) and a transportation tariff of $ 1.57 per mBtu, making the delivered price of gas at India-Pak border $7 per mBtu.
Pakistani officials said Islamabad had sought 10 per cent of the gas price as transit fee to deliver the gas at Pakistan-India border to provide right of way, security and safety to the pipeline as well as taxes and other expenses.
© IRNA 2007
