IPI pipeline: Pakistan and India agree on gas transport fee principles

India and Pakistan have agreed on principles to calculate a transportation fee for Iranian gas to be supplied via a pipeline, but were yet to reach an agreement on the transit fee, a top Pakistani official said on Thursday.
"We have agreed on principles under which the transportation tariff will be computed," Mukhtar Ahmad, Energy Adviser to Prime Minister, told reporters.
"All the elements that contributed to the cost of the infrastructure will need to be taken into account, and clearly that cost would need to be recovered through a transportation tariff," he said.
However, the two countries were yet to reach an agreement on a transit fee for the gas moving across Pakistan into India, Ahmad said. "But we do not expect this will be a road block in our way to concluding agreements regarding this project," he said.
India, Pakistan and Iran are negotiating a proposed 7 billion dollars gas pipeline deal for supplies of natural gas from Iran to feed the energy-hungry south Asian economies.
Iran has the world's second-largest gas reserves after Russia. But sanctions, politics and construction delays have slowed its gas development, and analysts say Tehran is unlikely to become a major exporter for a decade.
The proposed pipeline will initially carry 60 million cubic metres (2.2 billion cubic feet) of gas to be exported daily to Pakistan and India, half for each country. The capacity would be raised to 150 million cubic metres at a later date. The delivery point would at the Iran-Pakistan border.