By IANS,
New Delhi : Iran will consider India’s demand for making the India-Pakistan border the point of delivery of gas through the proposed tri-national pipeline.
This was conveyed by Iranian oil minister Gholam Hossein Nozari to Indian Petroleum Minister Murli Deora on the sidelines of the World Petroleum Congress in Madrid.
The meeting follows last Friday’s announcement by the foreign ministers of India and Pakistan in New Delhi that bilateral issues dogging the Iran-Pakistan-India (IPI) pipeline have been resolved.
India considers the fuel supply guarantee and security as a trilateral issue, since it wants the point of delivery of gas to be on the India-Pakistan border.
A government statement said Iran was open to considering India´s proposal to change the point of gas delivery from the Iran-Pakistan border to the Pakistan-India border.
Nozari said he was optimistic about implementation of the IPI gas pipeline project “citing the positive progress made by India and Pakistan in settling outstanding bilateral issues”.
Deora reiterated that India was committed to “speedy implementation” of the IPI project. He added that remaining issues will be discussed at the forthcoming trilateral meeting in Tehran.
Besides, the Iranian minister also expressed his openness to ONGC’s proposal to jointly develop a liquefied natural gas (LNG) project in Iran, along with a complete chain of an LNG re-gassified complex in India with Iranian participation.
On a query posed by the Indian delegation, Nozari said the block development in the Farsi gas fields is under consideration. ONGC Videsh and Indian Oil Corp own 80 percent of the stake in the block, while the rest is controlled by Oil India Ltd.
Meanwhile, the Gas Authority of India Ltd has proposed developing city gas distribution projects and a petrochemical projects. Both these proposals were received positively by the Iranian side.
In another meeting, the petroleum minister met his Colombian counterpart Hernan Martinez Torres, where they talked about ONGC’s role in improving oil recovery from existing oilfields in Colombia.