India struggles with pipeline
geopolitics By Zorawar Daulet
Singh
NEW DELHI - India spends more than
U$400 million each day on oil imports which
account for 70% of its oil consumption. For a
country facing such high dependence on outside
sources so early in its growth trajectory one
would expect securing reliable and long-term
supplies would be at the forefront of the
development and foreign policy agenda.
And
yet, Delhi seems to be expending diplomatic and
political resources in a direction that would
baffle even the most optimistic observer. Last
week, the union cabinet affirmed India's
participation in the
Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI)
1,700-kilometer pipeline, which envisages a flow
of gas from Central Asia into the Indian
heartland.
While Afghanistan and Pakistan
committed to the security of the
pipeline in a December
2010 Inter-Governmental Agreement, the transit
zone involved in the TAPI case is now widely
acknowledged as the most tumultuous region in the
world.
In Afghanistan, though the Kabul
regime has received extensive international aid
and military support, it is by no means assured
that the state will acquire a wherewithal that can
ensure the uninterrupted flow of a strategic
resource like natural gas across 735 kilometers of
southern and western Afghanistan, the hotbed of
Pashtun resistance.
In Pakistan, the
problem is magnified because the state's capacity
is weak and compromised by an ideology that is
repulsed by the idea of any interdependence with
India. Further, the military - the most vital
state organ for underwriting the security of the
800-kilometer transit route - is nurtured by a
strategic culture that strives to acquire new
leverages vis-a-vis India. To place India's energy
security in the hands of an institution that has
rarely been bound by international agreements
would be strategically irresponsible.
So,
why is this project being pursued? Perhaps, it
serves to underscore India's hope for a seamless
flow of resources across the greater South Asia
region. It might also be good public diplomacy as
India exudes the right notes for a region
condemned to irresolvable territorial conflicts.
Indeed, the US State Department
spokesperson summed up US interest in this
project, "You've got new transit routes, you've
got people-to-people links, you've got increased
trade across a region that historically has not
been well-linked, where there have been historic
antipathies which are now being broken down by
this positive investment project."
Few can
dismiss such grandiose rhetoric. But to assert
that the TAPI pipeline "is a perfect example of
energy diversification" as the US official did, is
going too far. What it actually reflects is
America's dual strategy to break the Russian
monopsony on Central Asian gas and prevent the
flow of Iranian gas eastward. Concern for South
Asian energy security was probably an
afterthought.
The pursuit of energy
security is a serious endeavor and cannot be
driven by or become hostage to ideological or
optimistic projections of international politics.
Surely, there are other more benign means to test
the prospects of Central-South Asian camaraderie?
A two-way flow of less strategic merchandise and
people could be a start.
If energy
security is a national concern, Delhi should be
pursuing a geostrategy that is based on a more
sensible comparative assessment of the potential
lines of communication to the energy starved
Indian heartland.
The severing of India's
natural lines of communication to the resource
wealth of Central and West Asia was one of the
great tragedies of partition. In many ways,
India's post-1947 foreign policy has struggled to
overcome the geopolitical consequences of 1947
after which India became a prisoner of geography
unable to forge continental geoeconomic or
geopolitical links with its western periphery and
beyond.
Fortunately, peninsular India has
historically always provided options to craft
maritime lines of communication between India and
the world. Indeed, over 90 percent of India's
trade and all of its oil imports rely on maritime
transportation networks. Thus, it is only logical
for India to explore maritime energy routes.
In 2009, Gas Authority of India (GAIL)
entered into a Principles of Cooperation agreement
with South Asia Gas Enterprises (SAGE) to explore
the technical viability of laying a deep-sea
pipeline from West Asia across the Arabian Sea to
India. According to SAGE, the cost of a pipeline
from Oman to India, a project first studied in
1995, would be $4 billion (TAPI is estimated at
$8-10 billion).
The gas tariff would also
be lower since transit or security costs become
negligible. Oman's access to the Arabian Sea makes
it a natural export hub for gas-rich states like
Qatar, Turkmenistan and Iran. A direct coastal
pipeline from Iran to India is not only
technically challenging given the depth and
turbulence of the Indus Canyon, but would also
require Pakistan's acquiescence since it would
traverse near the latter's exclusive economic
zone.
In March 2011, the union petroleum
minister stated in the Rajya Sabha (Upper House),
"So far technical feasibility of the [Oman-India]
project has not been established" and "not much
progress has been made since" mid-2009. Has
India's inability to de-hyphenate its Tehran ties
from its US-policy reduced the attractiveness of
this project?
Russia's strategy of
systematically investing in routes that bypass
politically volatile or unfriendly transit states
can serve as a lesson for India. In 2005, Moscow
and Berlin came together to collaborate on a
project that sought to overcome the financial and
geopolitical costs of transiting large volumes of
natural gas through Central and Eastern Europe.
Until recently, 70% of Russian gas was
transiting through Ukraine and Poland. The
1,200-kilometer Nord Stream sub-sea pipeline
network, which became operational in 2011, has
directly connected Eurasia's largest energy
supplier to the economic heart of Europe through
the Baltic Sea.
India's proximity to
energy rich West Asia is a geopolitical advantage
that most nations can only aspire for. Lines of
communication, however, do not just arise
spontaneously but are always the outcome of
sustained political, economic and even military
commitment to specific routes that are deemed
stable and relatively inexpensive to sustain. This
is the essence of geostrategy.
Moreover,
advancement in offshore technologies and high
hydrocarbon prices has made deepwater pipelines a
viable proposition. Finally, the growing
capabilities of the Indian navy will only
complement a political initiative to pursue a
sub-sea link between West Asia and India's west
coast.
It would be absurd if public
diplomacy that is apparently guiding Delhi's
calculus on TAPI deflects attention from the more
urgent need for a secure maritime energy line of
communication to India's economy. A subsea
pipeline deserves more than a perfunctory
assessment.
Zorawar Daulet Singh
is Research Fellow at the Center for Policy
Alternatives, New Delhi
(http://www.zorawardauletsingh.com)
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