GREATER NOIDA, India, Jan. 15 (UPI) -- India's energy minister said at an international energy conference his country should receive gas from a pipeline from Turkmenistan by 2017.
M. Veerappa Moily, India's energy minister, said parties to the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India natural gas pipeline were putting the project's development on the fast track.
"Apart from gas, this TAPI pipeline would usher in peace among the nations as well," the minister was quoted by the Indian newspaper the Hindu as saying Tuesday. "The gas is expected to reach the border of India by August 2017."
Representatives from Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India met last year in Ashgabat, the capital of Turkmenistan, to sign a transaction advisory services agreement. That cleared the way for the Asian Development Bank to find a company ready to form a consortium to find the money needed to build the $7.8 billion pipeline.
Pakistan and India would each get 1.3 billion cubic feet of natural gas per day while Afghanistan would get 500 million cubic feet per day from the pipeline from Turkmenistan.
TAPI is preferred by the U.S. government over a rival pipeline planned by Iran.
