Pak offers to sell Iranian gas to India

NEW DELHI: Lending a new twist to negotiations on the tri-nation gas pipeline, Islamabad has offered to sell Iranian gas to India at its border to save New Delhi the bother over risks associated with safe transit of the fuel through Pakistani territory.

Pakistan's Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz at a late night meeting with Petroleum Minister Murli Deora here on April 3 offered to buy 60 million standard cubic meters per day of gas from Iran, use half of it in his country and sell the rest to India at the Indo-Pak border, highly placed sources said.

This way India will neither have to deal with Iran, which faces UN sanctions over its nuclear programme, nor be bothered about cumbersome security of the 1,035-km pipeline stretch in Pakistan and safe delivery of gas at its border.

On the flip side, Pakistan may add some margin to the already high Iranian gas price.

Sources said when Deora objected to the high charges Islamabad was expecting for allowing transit of Iranian gas, the Pakistani leader offered that Islamabad would take care of negotiating a gas price with Tehran and cost of transporting the gas from Iran-Pak border to Pak-India border.

Iran wants to sell natural gas to India and Pakistan at 4.93 dollars per million British thermal unit (at 60 dollars per barrel crude oil price). On top of this, Pakistan wants a transit fee of 0.49 dollars per mBtu (10 per cent of the gas price) and a transportation tariff of 1.57 dollars per mBtu, making the delivered price of gas at India-Pak border 7 dollars per mBtu.