Page 10 - FSUOGM Week 40 2022

FSUOGM PIPELINES & TRANSPORT FSUOGM

Kabul, Ashgabat agree on TAPI

pipeline action plan

TURKMENISTAN AFGHANISTAN and Turkmenistan have military exit from the country.
agreed on a fresh action plan to achieve the con- Nevertheless, Ashgabat and Kabul insist they
The project is decades struction of the long-delayed Turkmenistan-Af- are moving forward. The action plan covers pipe-
in the making. ghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) gas pipeline, line construction, gas distribution for industrial
KhaamaPress reported on October 10, citing the parks and inhabitants of Herat in Afghanistan
Afghan foreign ministry. and natural gas conversion to a liquefied form.
Prior to the meeting at which the agreement “The TAPI project is one of the important and
was struck, Afghanistan's second deputy prime fundamental projects that can facilitate political
minister, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, said the engagement, regional cooperation and regional
country was ready to begin the project, adding development,” Abdul Rahman Habib, a spokes-
that “current conditions have created an ideal man for the Afghan Ministry of Energy, was
environment for its implementation”. That is reported as saying.
questionable given the security concerns that Afghanistan has said it anticipates earning
have repeatedly plagued the project ever since an more than $400mn in revenue per year from
initial phase of construction started and stalled TAPI operations and gas flows.
back in late 2015. Analysts say Afghanistan is If realised, the pipeline would transit natural
suffering heightened instability, with growing gas from Galkynysh gas field in Turkmenistan.
terrorist activities, under the Taliban regime The original target completion year for the
that took power just over a year ago after the US TAPI project was 2019. ™

Nord Stream leaks: a catastrophe

for climate goals

EUROPE THE explosions on September 25 at the Nord beginning to be realised.
Stream 1 and 2 pipelines in the Baltic Sea off the Before the leak, meeting the Paris Climate
300,00 tonnes of Swedish and Danish coasts could create a climate Agreement’s goal of limiting the global tem-
methane was released catastrophe that is just beginning to be realised, perature rise to 1.5˚C would require meth-
into the atmosphere. although it offers rare opportunities to measure ane emissions to fall by 45% by 2030, the UN’s
the exact impact of methane emissions on the Global Methane Assessment said in 2021. Such
environment. a reduction would avoid nearly 0.3°C of global
Already dubbed the worst methane leak warming by 2045.
ever, the three explosions, which created three The Nord Stream methane leaks have the
holes in the two systems, which each consist of potential to cause chaos for efforts to reduce
two pipes, have released about 300,000 tonnes methane emissions over the next two decades,
of methane, causing a 700-metre-wide pool of and could increase the already high danger of
bubbling water in the Baltic Sea. failing to meet net zero by 2050.
The explosions, which the Ukrainian govern-
ment immediately blamed on Russia, while the Explosions
German government suggested sabotage, have The explosions took place at a depth of 80-90
created large releases of methane, the scientific metres just outside Danish and Swedish terri-
name for natural gas. torial waters. This means that sophisticated and
The danger is that methane, over a period of advanced underwater technology, or even a
20 years, is up to 80 times more dangerous than submarine, would have been required.
CO2 in terms of global warming, although after While Germany and the EU pointed the
20 years it becomes less dangerous than CO2. finger at Russia, the Kremlin denied any
The leak will make it more difficult for responsibility, pointing to explicit threats by
Europe, and indeed the world, to meet cli- US President Joe Biden and others ahead of the
mate change goals, although the exact effects war that the US would shut down Nord Stream
of the released gas on the environment are just 2 if Russia invaded Ukraine. Russian media also

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