EurasiaNet.org: Turkmenistan: Work Starts on TAPI, But Will It Finish

Leaders from Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India gathered in Ashgabat on December 13 to jointly inaugurate the start to work building a natural gas pipeline linking the four countries.

The $10 billion project, if it is ever completed, could some way to quenching energy thirst in South Asia. 

The presidents of Turkmenistan and Afghanistan, the vice president of India and the prime minister of Pakistan traveled out to a spot in the Karakum desert near the city of Mary to attend the ceremonial welding of the first section of pipeline, which they all signed.  

“What we see today is not just TAPI, but a super-highway between Central Asia and South Asia,” Afghan president Ashraf Ghani said.

Turkmenistan’s President Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov was no less fulsome. MORE