Pakistan-Iran pipeline plan strains U.S. ties

ISLAMABAD – As the U.S. and Pakistan struggle to patch up frayed ties, plans for a Pakistani-Iranian natural gas pipeline further threaten the fragile partnership.

Pakistan desperately needs new energy sources and has made it clear that it plans to forge ahead with the pipeline to bring in natural gas from Iran, despite warnings from the United States that Islamabad could be hit with economic sanctions if it follows through with the project.

“If built, (it) could raise serious concerns under the Iran Sanctions Act. We have made that absolutely clear,” Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said.

Pakistan’s leaders appear unmoved. At a recent news conference, Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar said talk of sanctions wouldn’t deter Islamabad from ramping up its cooperation with Iran. “We cannot afford to be selective about where we receive energy from,” Khar said.

More than half of Pakistan’s manufacturers use natural gas to power their factories, and no other country relies as heavily on natural gas to fuel its cars, buses and trucks. About 21 percent of the country’s vehicles run on compressed natural gas.

Yet Pakistan produces only 30 percent of the natural gas it needs. Neighboring Iran, meanwhile, has the world’s second-largest natural gas reserves, topped only by Russia. The proposed 1,300-mile pipeline would deliver to Pakistan more than 750 million cubic feet of gas per day from Iran’s South Pars gas field in the Persian Gulf.

The United States has touted an alternative pipeline project that would transport natural gas from Turkmenistan through Afghanistan and into Pakistan and India. But with Afghanistan mired in a 10-year-old war with Taliban insurgents, experts in Pakistan doubt that pipeline will ever be built.