Trans-Afghani Gas Pipeline Managing Committee Meeting in Ashkhabad

The 3rd meeting of the managing committee for building the Trans-Afghani gas pipeline is being held in Ashkhabad on Thursday, as RIA Novosti learned in the international information department of the Turkmen president's staff.

The two previous meetings were arranged in July in Ashkhabad and in September in Kabul.

The committee is expected to prepare an inter-state agreement for creating an international consortium for building the gas pipeline Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan. The agreement will be signed during the trilateral meeting between Saparmurat Niyazov, Hamid Karzai and Pervez Musharraf scheduled for October 26-27 in Ashkhabad.

The construction of the gas pipeline may start already next year, Turkmenistan's president Saparmurat Niyazov said.

The 1,500-km gas pipeline may be built from the Turkmen gas field Dovletabad, with reserves estimated at 1.7 trillion cubic meters of gas, via Kandagar, Afghanistan, to the Pakistani city of Multan. Its capacity will amount to 30 billion cubic meters of gas annually. The construction costs are estimated at approximately $2 billion.