US nod sought for Iran gas pipeline to avoid $18bn penalty
Pakistan is believed to have asked the United States to allow it to build a pipeline for buying gas from Iran or help it pay an expected $18 billion penalty it would face if it did not complete the project by March 2024. Diplomatic sources told Dawn that Petroleum Minister Musadik Malik raised this issue with US officials when he visited Washington earlier this month, explaining to them that it’s legally bound to either complete the project by March 2024 or pay billions of dollars in penalty. According to these sources, “Washington is still reviewing the request.” And Michael Kugelman, a scholar of South Asian affairs at Washington’s Woodrow Wilson Centre, told Dawn the Biden administration “understands Pakistan’s problem” but was in no rush to respond. “With US relations with Iran having worsened in the Biden era, I don’t expect the administration to go out of its way to help any country move the needle forward on commercial cooperation with Tehran,” he said. “But Washington also understands that Islamabad’s economic interests drive the need to take policy steps that may go against US interests,” he added. “This suggests the administration will be in no hurry to make any move at all, even if this entails the possibility of China stepping in to help Pakistan cover the costs.” When Pakistani journalists asked the US State Department about a recent meeting between Pakistani and Iranian leaders during the opening of a border trading post, one of their spokespersons said: “We are aware of this meeting” where energy cooperation between the two nations was also discussed but “we do not have any comment to provide on the engagement.”