ISLAMABAD - Pakistan would host steering committee meeting on long desired Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) pipeline.
This was stated by the chairman OGDCL, Zahid Muzaffar, on Thursday, in a press conference called to mark the discovery of a well at Attock.
In our last visit, Turkmenistan president made it clear to all parties including India, that they have to sell the gas, no matter who ever buys it, and India showed a very positive response, even they happily accepted that steering committee venue would be Pakistan, Muzaffar said.
He said the committee meeting would be held before February 15 and quoting Turkmenistan president he said, the land consortium partners would also be finalised in year 2015.
Pakistan has been eyeing the TAPI gas pipeline to meet its energy deficit from last many years.  With an estimated cost of $10 billion, the pipeline is estimated to transit 33 billion cubic meters (bcm) of Turkmenistan gas, in around 30 years, with India and Pakistan, each taking 42 percent of the transit and Afghanistan retaining the remainder.
After a deadlock of many years over pricing and pipeline security issues, the formation of a new company, this year, has been declared a breakthrough, where stakeholders are all the four partners and transaction advisor is Asia Development Bank. TAPI Pipeline Company Limited will see Turkmengaz, Afghan Gas Enterprise, Inter State Gas Systems (Private) Limited (Pakistan), and GAIL (India) Limited with equal shares.
OGDCL Chairman was referring to the 19th round of TAPI Steering Committee Meeting held in Ashgabat, Turkmenistan, last month, which was attended by Petroleum Ministers of Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India, while Asian Development Bank (ADB), also participated in the meeting.
During the meeting it was decided that the next meeting of the Steering Committee would be held in February 2015 in Islamabad. It was also agreed to begin constructing the pipeline by 2016, with completion by the end of 2018. Previously the project deadline line was 2017.
Chairman also revealed to press that Turkmenistan government has promised to consider government owned OGDCL and PPL for the up stream exploration opportunity. According to him, it would be a rare and valuable opportunity for Pakistani firms as Turkmenistan does not allow foreign companies and also not offer share in exploration ventures. Muzaffar further said that during a recent Pakistani delegation visit to Moscow, data-sharing agreement has been signed with two Russian private oil companies.

We have signed the agreement to work together on 29 blocks OGDCL has won recently, and hope that the Russian companies would invest in those blocks. MD, OGDCL informed the media that OGDCL was chasing a target of 35 wells in fiscal year 2014-15 and out of those 19 are exploratory wells. We will explore six more wells in December, he said, adding his company was working in all the four provinces of the country and has marked three wells in Potohar region.
The chairman said that the new discoveries were not going to add any additional amount to gas or petroleum production, but would replace the depletion. Last year 500 mmcfd gas was depleted from the reservoirs and 500 mmcfd was added, so the over all production of the country remained the same, he explained.