‘Step on the gas’

Similar proposals have been made in the past but they died because of security concerns involving Pakistan. Now Aiyar has written to the Prime Minister suggesting a novel approach. He calls it “conversation without commitments’’.

Aiyar wrote: “With respect to the Iran-Pakistan-India pipeline, the Iranian Oil Minister has conveyed to me, through his Ambassador, an informal suggestion for ’conversation without commitment’ between the Petroleum Ministers of these three countries. I discussed this with the External Affairs Minister, Shri K. Natwar Singh, who is himself favourably inclined but asked me to first take this up with you.”

Aiyar has backed up his proposal with an overview of the energy situation to show just how pressing the need for radical solutions is.

He has pointed out that while India’s crude oil production will rise no more than 50 million tonnes over the next two years, its requirement could touch 300 million tonnes if it is to sustain a 7-8 per cent growth in GDP.

The answer, he reasons, would be to access gas wherever possible. Domestically, the needs cannot be met as the production is stuck at 90 million standard cubic metres of gas per day, while the requirement has already crossed 120 million cubic metres. Twenty years down the road, the requirement could touch 391 million cubic metres. “It would be in our larger national interest to encourage this demand to grow to lower the appetite for crude,” the letter says.

In fact, to push the proposal forward, Aiyar is willing to discard even the oft-trotted South Block line — that if Pakistan is interested in seeing the pipeline running through its land, it must grant most-favoured nation status to imports from India.

“Important, indeed crucial as these issues are to our economy, the gains from these pale in comparison to the massive gains which our country would secure from accessing Iranian gas through Pakistan.” he has argued.

The vision may be grand, but given the interests of the different nations involved, Aiyar probably realises that reconciling them all will not be easy.

That is where the novel approach of starting talks without any firm commitments comes in. Apart from having such conversations with pakistan and Iran, he has suggested starting talks on similar lines with Bangladesh and Myanmar on the one hand and Turkmenistan and Afghanistan on the other. In the long run, if the plan works out, he maps out an even more enchanting vision.

“If we are able to link up a pipeline through Pakistan with a pipeline through Bangladesh, not only would we have a national grid for international gas, our two recalcitrant neighbours might be drawn into a network of South Asian cooperation.”