connect the dots.........From Oil Price
"As the reverberations on the 11 March attack by a U.S. soldier on two Afghan villages in Helmand province continue to abrade U.S.-Afghan relations, the deteriorating security situation there after a decade of foreign military intervention will more than likely claim another victim – the long-proposed Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India natural gas pipeline.........Why?
Because the incident and its consequences underline beyond any doubt the deteriorating security situation in Afghanistan, and no one is likely to invest in a multi-billion dollar project devoid of security.
One immediate consequence of the attack, which Afghan President Hamid Karzai labeled a “massacre,” is that the Taliban have pulled out from reconciliation talks.
The proposed $7.6 billion, 1,040 mile-long TAPI natural gas pipeline has a long regional history, having first been proposed even before the Taliban captured Kabul, as in 1995 Turkmenistan and Pakistan initialed a memorandum of understanding. TAPI, with a carrying capacity of 33 billion cubic meters of Turkmen natural gas a year, was projected to run from Turkmenistan’s Dauletabad gas field across Afghanistan and Pakistan and terminate at the northwestern Indian town of Fazilka.
TAPI would have required the assent of the Taliban, and two years after the MoU was signed the Central Asia Gas Pipeline Ltd. consortium, led by U.S. company Unocal, flew a Taliban delegation to Unocal headquarters in Houston, where the Taliban signed off on the project."
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