Why not just put the IPI pipeline to rest?

It’s a bad idea to interlock India’s energy supplies with Pakistan. Period.

This is an archived blog post from The Acorn.

It was a stupid idea right from the start. Of course, it looks a lot more stupid now. Swaminathan Aiyar points out why the IPI gas pipeline project should now be officially declared dead. But you don’t have to read Mr Aiyar’s article at all if you had been reading The Acorn during the halcyon days of the ‘peace process’ when it was unfashionable to point out that ideas such as “creating mutual dependencies” with Pakistan are masochistic and that the risk premium will junk the business case in any case.

After explaining why involving Pakistan in a gas purchase deal with Iran is such a bad idea, Mr Aiyar inexplicably proposes a shallow undersea pipeline with a different architecture. It might be better than the overland pipeline but it still carries the risk of a Pakistan hurting itself to hurt India.

It makes far more sense to invest in LNG. This calls for investing in the technology, processing and domestic distribution infrastructure required to handle the imports. This calls for developing a maritime strategy that ensures that India’s LNG supply routes are secure, around the world. And it calls for foreign policy that ensures that LNG becomes the predominant way to ship the world’s natural gas, and the global market becomes competitive.

Of course all this is tall order. But let’s face it—its better than letting Pakistan hold us by the…you know what.

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