Turkmenistan is seeking over $12 per million British thermal unit (mmbtu) for gas it wants to sell to India through the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) pipeline, rates which New Delhi finds too high to accept.
Turkmenistan recently told New Delhi that it wanted a price of $400-450 per thousand cubic metre (about $12.7 per mmbtu) for the gas from its Dauletabad fields, an oil ministry official said.
After adding transportation charges and transit fee payable to Afghanistan and Pakistan, the delivered price of Turkmen gas in India would be close to $18 per mmbtu, a far cry from the $4.21 per MMBTU price the government approved for Reliance Industries’ eastern offshore D6 field last year.
Gas from rival Iran-Pakistan-India will come at $5.56 per mmbtu.
New Delhi on its part has offered to give $200-230 per thousand cubic metres price to Turkmenistan, the official said.
Turkmenistan has warned that it may opt for competing projects to Russia, China and the European Union if contracts for TAPI are not concluded in time, he said.
The Central Asian nation says its price quote was in sync with the rates it was expecting from Russia from 2009.
Gas producers around the world are increasingly benchmarking gas prices to crude oil and say the cleaner fuel should get 16 per cent of the prevailing oil rates.
The Asian Development Bank (ADB)-backed TAPI project is to supply 35-40 million standard cubic metres per day of gas to India from 2014.
New Delhi has offered to host the next Steering Committee meeting of the TAPI pipeline next month but no dates have yet been agreed between the four nations, the official said.
The 56-inch diameter TAPI pipeline is envisaged to supply 90 mmscmd of gas with Afghanistan taking five MMSCMD in the first and second year and 14 mmscmd thereafter. The remaining volumes are to be split equally between India and Pakistan.
Turkmenistan, which currently sells most of its 50 billion cubic metre (BCM) gas to Russia and Iran, last week agreed to sell 40 BCM of natural gas to China through a planned pipeline instead of previously agreed 30 BCM.
Russia, keen to maintain control over Central Asian gas flows, has offered to build a new pipeline along the Caspian to take more Turkmen gas at European price.
