November 15-2013
The Islamic Republic has said it will agree to talk to Pakistan about changing the price to be charged for any Iranian natural gas piped into Pakistan.
Managing Director of the National Iranian Gas Company (NIGC) Hamid-Reza Araqi said, “The price for gas to Pakistan is not fixed, hence we can talk with them [Pakistani officials] about the price of the gas supplies to that country.”
Araqi said, “As per the contract, the two sides can negotiate the price of the gas supplies after several years.”
Last week, Oil Minister Bijan Namdar-Zanganeh announced the country would likely give up on the pipeline project because it was going nowhere.
Pakistan has never publicly made an issue of the price in the contract. But a Pakistan think-tank said a few weeks ago that the contract links the price of the gas to the market price of oil, so that Pakistan would end up paying four times more for Iranian gas than is normal now in Asia.
Meanwhile, the Indian daily The Hindu reported last week that the Indian Petroleum Ministry said Pakistan had expressed an interest in importing natural gas from India and India was willing to do so, if agreement could be reached on price.
India imports liquid natural gas (LNG) and has large facilities to convert LNG back into gas. It could thus divert some of its imports to Pakistan, which cannot currently handle LNG.
Indian officials said they could send Pakistan about 40 percent as much gas as it originally planned to take from Iran.