India has experienced enormous growth in population at an average of 7% a year in the last decade. With this growth, India’s need for energy has increased exponentially. In a move that threatened to strain United States – India relations, India signed a $40 billion contract with Iran, promising to import more than 1.2 million metric tons of liquefied natural gas each year from the natural gas giant.
Iran possesses the second largest proven natural gas reserves (only Russian reserves are larger) estimated at 812 trillion cubic feet of the resource. With an economy that is often in disarray, Iran has pumped up its efforts to increase its gas exports dating back to the large discoveries of their South Pars natural gas fields in 1988. This discovery made Iran the sole possessor of 9% of the planet’s natural gas reserves. Iran envisioned the promise of large profits if export deals could made with the ever increasing populations and energy needs of South Asian countries like Pakistan and India. In 1995, Pakistan signed an initial agreement with Iran allowing a pipeline to be constructed from the South Pars fields to Pakistan’s industrial port, Karachi. This agreement resulted in a feeling of confidence within Iran’s natural gas industry, and motivated Iran to take that agreement one step further. Iran proposed that Pakistan could not serve as a final destination of the new pipeline, but rather as a stopping off point, with the pipeline continuing on into India. This would not be an enormous undertaking of engineering, but of political compromise, with India and Pakistan having had strained relations since the mid 1940s over there disputed mutual borders. Perhaps India and Pakistan could put aside their political and social disagreements in order to achieve the economic growth the import of natural gas fuel could create for both countries. The proposed pipeline has been nicknamed the “Peace Pipeline” because of the promise of political compromise and mutual agreement between the two nations of India and Pakistan.
Perhaps an even larger hurdle for the pipeline exists half a world away in a totally different hemisphere. The United States has expressed its concern and objection to any agreements, economic or otherwise, made between any of its allies and Iran. Iran has expressed disdain for the large presence of US military troops in the Indian Ocean. An agreement between the three countries is still in the works, but the construction has not yet begun. Iranian natural gas companies similar to Triple Diamond Energy Corp, British Petroleum, and others, will be ready to assist with construction efforts when the time arrives.
About the Author: Robert Jent is the president of Triple Diamond Energy Corp. Triple Diamond Energy specializes in acquiring the highest quality prime oil and gas properties. For more information, visit http://www.triplediamondenergycorp.blogspot.com.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment