About

• Conceived in the 1990s, the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) project, also known as Trans-Afghanistan Pipeline, entails setting up of a 1,800-km long trans-country natural gas pipeline. 
• The pipeline will see around 33 billion cubic meters of natural gas each year extracted from the Galkynysh gas field in southeast Turkmenistan.
• It will be pumped through the pipeline traversing Afghanistan, including Herat and Kandahar in the south, before crossing into Balochistan province in Pakistan and ending in Fazilka in Punjab.
• Pakistan and India will each purchase 42% of the gas deliveries, and Afghanistan 16%, while Kabul will also benefit from lucrative transit fees of around $500 million per year.

• The pipeline was initially expected to be complete by 2019 but ran into issues over India-Pakistan tension and the Taliban situation in Afghanistan.