Pipeline deja vu
By Khuldune Shahid

Its idea was conceived in the 1990s, is around 1,750 kilometres in length, has its origin adjacent to the Caspian Sea, caters to a massive chunk of the energy needs of the region, has the blessings of the US and is renowned for giving diplomats a wide array of nightmares. A major global bank has backed the pipeline financially and countering Iranian economic and military domination in the region is an important subplot of the project.

The collapse of the Soviet Union was the major catalyst in its instigation, with Russian dilly-dallying etched in its folklore. And the fact that the pipeline’s road map traverses a war-affected country was one of the major hurdles in its inception. The pipeline under discussion is the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) oil pipeline, but one could be forgiven for assuming that we’d been talking about the TAPI (Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India) gas pipeline.

There’s an eerie assortment of coincidences that links the two pipelines. And it’s almost as if the same ‘pipeline gods’ that helped provide divine diplomatic inspiration for the BTC are reuniting to give energy strategists an uncanny déjà vu. Even so, despite the fact that the demographics, geopolitics, economic feasibility and strategic ramifications are almost identical there’s a crucial differential distinguishing the two pipelines: BTC became a reality back in May 2005, while TAPI is still a blurry sketch on the Ashgabat drawing board.

The fact that the two projects are so similar reveals that the problems surrounding the project are virtually identical as well. And more often than not, similar problems have similar solutions. With TAPI’s stakeholders being given a ‘how-to-successfully-construct-your-pipeline’ manual, in the shape of the BTC case study, they can find more than a cue or two. And as far as TAPI’s stakeholders are concerned, Pakistan might just top this four-nation list.

Over the past few years with Pakistan’s energy predicament becoming conspicuous, the urgency of a pipeline project to bridge a shortfall of gas supply by one billion units per day has become all the more apparent. With the two proposed projects IP (Iran-Pakistan) pipeline and TAPI being so painfully contrasting, the ‘IP or TAPI’ chants have hogged opinions and editorials a la ‘Ronaldo or Messi’, ‘Hollande or Sarkozy’, or ‘The Hulk or Superman’. Such is the gravity of the energy shortfall, that the ‘or’ needs to be supplanted by an ‘and’ if Pakistan is to drag itself out of the multi-pronged crisis.

Just because the previous government showcased a daredevil stunt while standing on the departure terminal for what doesn’t seem like a round trip, does not mitigate the TAPI’s significance one bit. TAPI needs to transform from being a pipe dream to a reality, regardless of IP’s future.

Quite possibly the most crucial lesson that TAPI’s stakeholders can learn from BTC is of mustering the support of oil and gas companies. With the security concerns surrounding TAPI, just as they engulfed BTC, there’s no better way of ensuring its security than signing deals with the resource owning firms.

With the ‘A’ in TAPI being the primary cause of concern, the best way to ascertain security in Afghanistan, following the withdrawal of US troops in 2014, is by making it the pivot of energy sharing in South Asia, just like the Caspian region was in the early and mid-1990s for Central Asia.

Energy sharing was one of the major reasons behind Central Asia’s transformation to something bordering on a relatively tranquil region, and herein lies a crucial lesson for TAPI’s stakeholders and South Asia as a whole.

As soon as the respective fiscal growth of countries is linked to the tranquillity of a particular country or region, suddenly everyone starts to work hard to ensure stability in that particular realm. And with Kabul getting eight percent of the total TAPI revenue and a fair share of the total employment opportunities generated (think Azerbaijan circa 2002); the project could be just the boost that Afghanistan needs to take baby steps towards stability.

Just like linking Azerbaijan’s abundant oil reserves to Georgia and Turkey – two nations with a precipitously increasing oil demand – through BTC, transformed the antagonistic forces in the region, TAPI could potentially do the same to Indo-Pak hostility, since India and Pakistan are the two countries with the severest energy shortfall in the region.

Troubled Indo-Pak ties, volatility in Afghanistan’s north, and the question marks over the status quo formulation following US troops’ departure are quite possibly the three biggest concerns surrounding TAPI. And ironically TAPI is the one stone that would knock down these three birds resoundingly.

BTC had the monetary goodwill of the World Bank and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, while TAPI has the Asian Development Bank cheerleading for its cause. BTC was an integral part of an energy sharing pipeline web in Central Asia, while TAPI could be one instigating a similar network in South Asia that could include IP as well. All that is needed is a collective South Asian leap of faith and just like BTC we’d have bilateral harmony flowing through a 1,750-km pipeline.

And then maybe sometime in the future we’d have TAPI as a central plot point in a James Bond flick, just like BTC was in The World Is Not Enough. With Afghanistan and Pakistan in the mix, it could be a massive Hollywood blockbuster.

The writer is a Lahore-based journalist. Email: khulduneshahid@gmail.com Twitter: @khuldune