ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s new Federal Minister for Petroleum and Natural Resources Shahid Abbasi has said the government would honour the Iran-Pakistan gas pipeline deal signed by the previous government as the agreement was signed between two sovereign countries.
Without mentioning the name of President Asif Zardari’s Pakistan People’s Party government, the minister said that Pakistan had signed the deal, so Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League-N government would honour it.
However, there are some issues that include gas pricing and impact of the sanctions imposed by the US and EU countries. “I have not been so far briefed on the project. So I am not in a position to talk on this more,” the minister said. “We have asked the Foreign Office to let us know about the impact of the sanctions imposed on Iran by US and EU countries on Pakistan once this project gets completed.”
“I haven’t looked into the IP agreement so far and the gas sales price agreement. However, we need the gas price at lower side but to assess this I still need to look into the gas sales price agreement under the IP project,” Abbasi said.
When asked whether his government would be able to manage the oil facility from Saudi Arabia, the minister after some pause said that he didn’t know about any indication from the brotherly country.
He indicated that India was willing to export 400mmcfd gas to Pakistan and to this effect a delegation from an Indian oil company GAIL, including a joint secretary of the Indian government, had held a meeting with him to assess Pakistan’s willingness to import gas from India.
“Since the country is energy deficient, we showed our willingness and our experts would soon visit India to sort out the technical issues involved in it. After the report of the technical team, both the countries will initiate talks on the gas tariff issue.”
Internews
