Mehmood ul Hasan Qadir — Economist & Financial Analyst | Dubai, UAE

The Pakistan Ledger | Opinion

Pakistan has been negotiating energy infrastructure deals with its neighbours for longer than most of its senior technocrats have been in their careers. The Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India gas pipeline — TAPI — has been under discussion, negotiation, memorandum, and framework agreement since the 1990s. The Iran-Pakistan gas pipeline — IPI, once called the “Peace Pipeline” with the kind of optimism reserved for projects that never get built — has been legally committed to since 2009. CASA-1000, the electricity transmission project that would bring Central Asian hydro power through Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, has been under development for over a decade. Not one of these projects has delivered a single unit of energy to a Pakistani consumer. This is not a coincidence. It is a pattern that reveals something fundamental about Pakistan’s geopolitical position and its capacity to execute complex regional infrastructure.

TAPI — Thirty Years of Framework Agreements

The TAPI pipeline proposes to carry approximately 33 billion cubic metres of Turkmen natural gas annually from the Galkynysh field — one of the world’s largest gas reserves — through Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India. The economics, on paper, are compelling: Turkmenistan has gas it needs to diversify away from dependence on China; Pakistan and India have chronic gas shortages; Afghanistan would receive transit revenues. The project has received ADB support, sovereign guarantees, and intergovernmental agreements. Construction on the Turkmenistan segment has begun.

The Pakistan and Afghanistan segments have not moved in any meaningful way. The reason is the same reason every Afghan-transit infrastructure project stalls: the security environment in Afghanistan is incompatible with the construction, operation, and protection of a major energy pipeline. The Taliban administration that controls Afghanistan since 2021 has expressed interest in TAPI revenues. Whether it can or will provide the security guarantees that pipeline insurance and financing require is a question that has not been answered to the satisfaction of any serious investor. TAPI may eventually be built. It will not be built on any timeline that addresses Pakistan’s gas shortage emergency.

IPI — A Pipeline Held Hostage by Geopolitics

The Iran-Pakistan pipeline presents a different obstruction — not Afghan instability, but US sanctions on Iran. Pakistan signed the IPI agreement in 2009, agreed to a construction timeline, and has been in serial default on that timeline ever since. Iran has completed its domestic section of the pipeline from the South Pars gas field to the Pakistan border. The Pakistan section remains unbuilt.

Pakistan’s failure to build its section of IPI reflects a genuine constraint — no international bank, engineering firm, or equipment supplier operating under US financial system access can participate in a project that would benefit Iran’s economy while US sanctions remain in force. Pakistan has, under different governments, attempted to frame IPI construction as a sovereign act outside sanctions jurisdiction, but the practical financing and technical procurement reality makes this aspiration hollow. Until the geopolitical framework around Iran fundamentally changes, IPI is a bilateral political statement rather than an energy project.

CASA-1000 — Progress in Slow Motion

CASA-1000 is technically the most advanced of Pakistan’s regional energy infrastructure commitments. The project involves constructing high-voltage direct current transmission lines from Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan through Afghanistan to Pakistan, delivering up to 1,300 megawatts of hydroelectric power. World Bank financing has been committed. The Central Asian segments have made construction progress. The Afghan section, once again, is the vulnerability.

The cost-benefit modelling on CASA-1000 power for Pakistan — when completed — shows a delivered electricity cost competitive with current RLNG generation. But the financing gap, the Afghan transit risk premium, and the timeline uncertainty have made CASA-1000 a perennially “almost there” project that has not delivered power to a Pakistani substation.

The Pattern and What It Means

The common thread across TAPI, IPI, and CASA-1000 is Afghanistan — either as a transit route, a security guarantor, or a construction environment. Pakistan’s dependence on Afghanistan as the necessary corridor for regional energy connectivity is its most significant geopolitical energy vulnerability. Until alternative routes exist, or until Afghanistan is stable enough for infrastructure investment, Pakistan’s regional energy import ambitions will remain framework agreements rather than functioning pipelines and transmission lines.

The lesson is not that Pakistan should stop pursuing regional energy connectivity — it should continue, with realistic timelines and diplomatic investment. The lesson is that Pakistan cannot afford to substitute energy diplomacy for energy production. The circular debt, the industrial electricity cost crisis, and the fossil fuel import bill cannot wait for TAPI to navigate through Afghanistan. Domestic solar, wind, and hydro development — within Pakistan’s own territorial control — must be the immediate priority, while regional energy infrastructure is pursued on the thirty-year horizon it realistically represents. Signing energy deals that never get completed is not a strategy. It is a substitute for one.

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Mehmood ul Hasan Qadir is an Economist and Financial Analyst based in Dubai, UAE. He writes on Pakistan’s economic structure, policy failures, and reform pathways for The Pakistan Ledger.