ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Oct. 27 (UPI) -- Turkmenistan and Pakistan are close to reaching a natural gas sale purchase price for a pipeline linking four Asian countries, a government official said.
Turkmenistan Deputy Energy Minister Yarmuhammet Orazgulyev led a delegation to Islamabad to discuss pricing for the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India natural gas pipeline.
Ashgabat offered a price that was 74 percent of oil parity. Islamabad offered a range of 60-68 percent of oil parity, a government official told Pakistan's Dawn newspaper.
That price, the official added, is lower than the 78 percent of oil parity offered by Iran for its bilateral natural gas pipeline planned from the South Pars gas field in the Persian Gulf.
Ashgabat aims to deliver about 1.1 trillion cubic feet of gas each year through the pipeline when it goes online in 2014. Dawn reports the Iranian pipeline would deliver about 750 million cfd by the end of 2014.
India was included in the Iranian gas pipeline option at one point and commentary in Pakistani newspaper The Nation said the Iranian pipeline is all but dead because of an electricity deal between New Delhi and Islamabad.
Iran had said it was considering expanding its options for liquefied natural gas deliveries, which don't rely on pipelines.
Officials told Dawn that Ashgabat and Islamabad agreed to sign a purchase agreement for TAPI in November.
