Posted on 05/03/2006 12:35:01 AM PDT by familyop
Energy: Dispute on price India will pay for gas in the $22-bn pact
New Delhi, May 2: Iran today dangled the gas pipeline carrot to New Delhi after showing the LNG stick to restrain India from siding with the US on a Security Council resolution that would legally bind Tehran to halt all nuclear enrichment activity.
At a hurriedly-scheduled ‘non-structured meeting’, Iranian deputy oil minister Nejad Hosseinian told New Delhi that the price agreed between them last June for five million tonnes of LNG was no longer valid.
At the same time, he assured New Delhi that there would be a common pipeline for gas supplies to Pakistan and India that would be replicated if future demands of both countries were to cross the proposed pipelines carrying capacity.
Both messages, conveyed months ago to India, were seen as Tehran’s push to get India on its side after the International Atomic Energy Agency said last week that Iran had not met UN demands to halt enrichment activity.
Even the timing of the meeting was a clear pointer. Iran informed India on Friday that Hosseinian would be visiting New Delhi on Monday with Oil Minister Kazem Vaziri Hameneh likely to come late Tuesday.
But when the Indian team declined to budge on LNG on Monday, Vaziri’s visit was called off, said officials.
Reiterating what the National Iranian Gas Export Co said in January, Hosseinian informed the Indian side that the LNG deal was not implementable as the Supreme Economic Council had not approved the LNG price of $3.25 per million British thermal unit.
Instead, he said, it wants the price to be re-negotiated at current market conditions or close to $4.8 per mbtu.
Last October, Tehran linked its energy dialogue to India’s nuclear diplomacy asking New Delhi to “compensate (its) past default (voting against Iran) by supporting Iran in the next meeting of the IAEA board of governors in November.
That November meeting saw no vote and Iran flexed its muscle on LNG pricing ahead of the crucial IAEA meeting in February.
Petroleum Minister Murli Deora, who met Prime Minister Manmohan Singh before his meeting with Hosseinian, said New Delhi was opposed to revisiting the price agreed in June but would continue negotiations.
The official view is that scrapping the deal with Iran may not send appropriate political message both within and outside the country, sources said.
The issue would be further discussed when the petroleum ministers of Iran and India meet in Tehran next month for the trilateral ministerial meeting on Iran-Pakistan-India pipeline project.
Ahead of this meeting, both sides would submit their price expectations for the pipeline gas so that both could be well prepared for the negotiation.
Ping.
Oh yeah... we're going to do business with you disreputable jerks. We'll take your country over with the USA and build the pipeline for nothing.
Going by India's style of functioning, India is likely to treat the two issues (nulear and gas pipeline) seperately. The LNG price negotiations will be done on purely economic terms and the Nuclear row with IAEA will be treated as a geo-political issue and will merit a seperate set of geo-politico-strategic consideration on part of India.
That's understandable. The USA tends to do the same--that is, trying to separate economic foreign relations from security concerns. See our leaders' sometimes shameful treatment against Taiwan in favor of China's vanity and penchant for expansionism, for example.
Even military action against Iran would not be likely to interrupt the pipeline construction. If India wants to follow through with the pipeline deal, it will happen.
Actually the biggest impediment (for India) from this pipeline may notbe a US attack/invasion of Iran,which but India & Pakistan may tacitly support,but Pakistan's unreliability as well as instability in Baluchistan through which such a pipeline will have to pass through.Till now India has been accused of helping Baluch insurgents against the Pakistani army,but if a trilateral pipeline takes off,the insurgents will see it as a betrayal.
Did I mention that the Baluch insurgents are experts in blowing up Pakistani pipelines!!!!
So India, our so-called "natural ally", is doing a liquefied natural gas deal with teh mullahocracy of Iran, one of the most active sponsors of terrorism, one of the most anti-American countries in the world, and one that threatens both America and Israel, both of which India likes to try to claim as allies.
Does anyone else find this suspicious? Such a country is unworthy of our support.
Idi°t, America sells weapons aplenty to Saudi Arabia! And Pakistan, and many others. And how many 9-11 hijackers came from Saudi Arabia? Tell me, tell me!
Israel sold its plans for the Lavi fighter, and F16 designs to China less than a decade or so ago. And they nearly sold the ChiComs the top-end Phalcon AWACS. India needs all the oil and gas it can get, and Iran's proximity to it is lucrative.
You Sir, are ignorant when it comes to foreign policy.
30 April 2006
ISLAMABAD - Pakistani and Iranian officials on Sunday concluded their technical discussions on a 2,670-kilometre (1,600-mile) pipeline from Iran’s southern Pars field, and reiterated intentions to press ahead for the quick realization of the project.
“For Pakistan the Iranian pipeline project is very, very important as it needs energy to fuel its economic growth,” secretary petroleum Ahmad Waqar told reporters after leading the talks with Mohammad-Hadi Nejad-Hosseinian, deputy Oil Minister.
Our various national leaders will do just about anything for their fattest contributing constituents (corporate chicks and effeminate men) these days.
US decides on transit plan: source (President Bush Bans Taiwan President from Contiental US)
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