One of the top roller-coaster sagas in what, some years ago, I christened Pipelineistan, has yielded a definitive twist.

The US$8 billion,1,814-kilometer Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India pipeline (TAPI) was officially inaugurated on Friday, in full pomp, and with proceedings broadcast live on Afghan TV, on the Turkmen-Afghan border close to Herat.

Assuming there are no major glitches – and that’s a major “if” – TAPI should, in theory, be finished by 2020. So far, though, endless deadlines have come and gone.

TAPI simply cannot exist without Taliban approval. According to a statement by Taliban spokesman Qari Mohammad Yusuf Ahmadi, “the Islamic Emirate views this project as an important element of the country’s economic infrastructure and believes its proper implementation will benefit the Afghan people. We announce our cooperation in providing security for the project in areas under our control.”

Another Taliban faction, led by Mullah Mohammad Rasool, also let it be known, via spokesman Mullah Abdul Manan Niazi, that, “we will not allow any group or state to disrupt this project.”

When Ahmadi claims TAPI was initially planned when the Taliban were in power in Kabul from 1996 to 2001, he’s correct. The Taliban were wined and dined in Houston in 1997, as I reported for Asia Times, but nothing came out of it. The haggling was all about transit fees

All of the above is code for the Taliban getting their cut – which happens to have been the key point of contention ever since the first Clinton administration decided the then rulers of Afghanistan were worth doing business with.

So when spokesman Ahmadi claims TAPI was initially planned when the Taliban were in power in Kabul from 1996 to 2001, he’s correct. The Taliban were wined and dined in Houston in 1997, as I reported for Asia Times, but nothing came out of it. The haggling was all about transit fees.

For Kabul, the game from now on is about providing adequate security – from construction to operation. After all, this is a major job-creating project bound to involve 30,000 Afghan workers and yield US$500 million annually for Kabul in transit rights.

Rumors swirled in Herat about a bunch of unidentified jihadis, allegedly trained in Iran, planning to attack the inauguration ceremony. There has been no confirmation whatsoever that this is the case – either from Afghan or Iranian sources. Even President Ghani rejected the outlandish idea that Tehran would sabotage TAPI.  

The rumors should be traced to a Pipelineistan mini-Cold War between TAPI and IPI – the competing Iran-Pakistan-India pipeline, which, under pressure from the Bush and Obama administrations, was eventually reduced to IP.  

A win-win situation

TAPI is a very good deal for Ashgabat – as it allows Turkmenistan finally to diversify its export markets instead of relying entirely on its major customer China. Gurbanguly, moreover, wants to turn TAPI into an energy/IT/connectivity corridor.

Washington supports TAPI – and not IPI/IP – because its main financial source is the Japan-led Asian Development Bank (ADB), and because it would be a key stabilizing factor uniting Afghanistan, Pakistan and India.  

From Islamabad’s point of view, both TAPI and IP are very much needed. TAPI will meet at least 20% of Pakistan’s natural gas requirements and 10% of its energy needs.

In economic and geopolitical terms, a steel umbilical cord running along the intersection of Central and South Asia can only be a win-win.

“We hope our next generation will see this pipeline as the foundation of a joint position in our region which is aimed at improving our economy, providing jobs and increasing our security, all in our fight against extremists”

What we have here is a major upward twist in terms of Eurasian integration. The in-progress Turkmenistan energy corridor will eventually link with one of the major Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) projects, the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), sharply increasing Central Asian connectivity.

Even New Delhi, despite its immense reservations regarding CPEC, is now hailing TAPI, via Minister Akbar, as “a symbol of our goals” and “a new page in co-operation” between the four nations.

Additionally, TAPI adds to India’s connectivity with Central Asia, via Afghanistan, as embodied in New Delhi’s investment in Chabahar port in Iran.

Ghani, for his part, said: “We hope our next generation will see this pipeline as the foundation of a joint position in our region which is aimed at improving our economy, providing jobs and increasing our security, all in our fight against extremists.”

But the key piece of the puzzle is his public recognition that Afghanistan, slowly but surely, may now be positioning itself – finally – as a connector between Central Asia and South Asia.

The next piece will come from the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) – with Russia, China, India, Pakistan and Iran making sure the war in Afghanistan is over for good.

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Vladimir Putin, Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Hassan Rouhani will hold a summit this Wednesday in Sochi to discuss Syria. Russia, Turkey and Iran are the three power players at the Astana negotiations – where multiple cease-fires, as hard to implement as they are, at least evolve, slowly but surely, towards the ultimate target – a political settlement.

A stable Syria is crucial to all parties involved in Eurasia integration. As Asia Times reported, China has made it clear that a pacified Syria will eventually become a hub of the New Silk Roads, known as the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) – building on the previous business bonanza of legions of small traders commuting between Yiwu and the Levant.

Away from intractable war and peace issues, it’s even more enlightening to observe how Turkey, Iran and Russia are playing their overlapping versions of Eurasia economic integration and/or BRI-related business.

Much has to do with the energy/transportation connectivity between railway networks – and, further on the down the road, high-speed rail – and what I have described, since the early 2000s, as Pipelineistan.

The Baku-Tblisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline, a deal brokered in person in Baku by the late Dr Zbigniew “Grand Chessboard” Brzezinski, was a major energy/geopolitical coup by the Clinton administration, laying out an umbilical steel cord between Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey.

Now comes the Baku-Tblisi-Kars (BTK) railway – inaugurated with great fanfare by Erdogan alongside Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and Georgian Prime Minister Giorgi Kvirikashvili, but also crucially Kazakh Prime Minister Bakhytzhan Sagintayev and Uzbek Prime Minister Abdulla Aripov. After all, this is about the integration of the Caucasus with Central Asia.

Erdogan actually went further: BTK is “an important chain in the New Silk Road, which aims to connect Asia, Africa, and Europe.” The new transportation corridor is configured as an important Eurasian hub linking not only the Caucasus with Central Asia but also, in the Big Picture, the EU with Western China.

BTK is just the beginning, considering the long-term strategy of Chinese-built high-speed rail from Xinjiang across Central Asia all the way to Iran, Turkey, and of course, the dream destination: the EU. Erdogan can clearly see how Turkey is strategically positioned to profit from it.

Of course, BTK is not a panacea. Other connectivity points between Iran and Turkey will spring up, and other key BRI interconnectors will pick up speed in the next few years, such as the Eurasian Land Bridge across the revamped Trans-Siberian and an icy version of the Maritime Silk Road: the Northern Sea Route across the Arctic.

What’s particularly interesting in the BTK case is the Pipelineistan interconnection with the Trans-Anatolian Gas Pipeline (TANAP), bringing natural gas from the massive Azeri gas field Shah Deniz-2 to Turkey and eventually the EU.

Turkish analyst Cemil Ertem stresses, “just like TANAP, the BTK Railway not only connects three countries, but also is one of the main trade and transport routes in Asia and Europe, and particularly Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan ports. It connects Central Asia to Turkey with the Marmaray project in Istanbul and via the Caspian region. Along with the Southern Gas Corridor, which constitutes TANAP’s backbone, it will also connect ports on the South China Sea to Europe via Turkey.”

It’s no wonder BTK has been met with ecstatic reception across Turkey – or, should we say, what used to be known as Asia Minor. It does spell out, graphically, Ankara’s pivoting to the East (as in increasing trade with China) as well as a new step in the extremely complex strategic interdependence between Ankara and Moscow; the Central Asian “stans”, after all, fall into Russia’s historical sphere of influence.

Add to it the (pending) Russian sale of the S-400 missile defense system to Ankara, and the Russian and Chinese interest in having Turkey as a full member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO).

From IPI to IP and then II

Now compare the BTK coup with one of Pipelineistan’s trademark cliff-hanging soap operas; the IPI (Iran-Pakistan-India), previously dubbed “the peace pipeline”.

IPI originally was supposed to link southeastern Iran with northern India across Balochistan, via the Pakistani port of Gwadar (now a key hub of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, CPEC). The Bush and Obama administrations did everything to prevent IPI from ever being built, betting instead on the rival TAPI (Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India) – which would actually traverse a war zone east of Herat, Afghanistan.

TAPI might eventually be built – even with the Taliban being denied their cut (that was exactly the contention 20 years ago with the first Clinton administration: transit rights). Lately, Russia stepped up its game, with Gazprom seducing India into becoming a partner in TAPI’s construction.

But then came the recent announcement by Russian Energy Minister Aleksandr Novak: Moscow and Tehran will sign a memorandum of understanding to build a 1,200km gas pipeline from Iran to India; call it II. And Gazprom, in parallel, will invest in unexplored Iranian gas fields along the route.

Apart from the fact of a major win for Gazprom – expanding its reach towards South Asia – the clincher is the project won’t be the original IPI (actually IP), where Iran already built the stretch up to the border and offered help for Islamabad to build its own stretch; a move that would be plagued by US sanctions. The Gazprom project will be an underwater pipeline from the Persian Gulf to the Indian Ocean.

From New Delhi’s point of view, this is the ultimate win-win. TAPI remains a nightmarish proposition, and India needs all the gas it can get, fast. Assuming the new Trump administration “Indo-Pacific” rhetoric holds, New Delhi is confident it won’t be slapped with sanctions because it’s doing business with both Iran and Russia.

And then there was another key development coming out of Putin’s recent visit to Tehran: the idea – straight out of BRI – of building a rail link between St. Petersburg (on the Baltic) and Chabahar port close to the Persian Gulf. Chabahar happens to be the key hub of India’s answer to BRI: a maritime trade link to Afghanistan and Central Asia bypassing Pakistan, and connected to the North-South Transport Corridor (INSTC), of which Iran, India and Russia are key members alongside Caucasus and Central Asian nations.

You don’t need a weatherman to see which way the wind blows across Eurasia; integration, all the way.

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Exactly what the Americans are basing this confidence on remains a mystery. Just a few months ago, the US Agency for International Development (USAID), which is financing the TAPI project, put a hold on its implementation due to uncertainty associated with the withdrawal of international security forces from Afghanistan in 2014, where the situation is not only not improving, it is showing clear signs of escalating into a civil war. A report by the US intelligence-gathering community entitled «An evaluation of global threats in 2013» acknowledges that attempts to achieve security are particularly fragile in those areas where responsibility is being handed over to the Afghan National Security Forces, which are in need of international help. The Taliban are still capable of challenging the United States. 

Essentially, the Americans are insisting that the gas pipeline be built in the middle of a combat situation. There are areas in Afghanistan where the authority of the central government is rather weak, and local government bodies are known for their corruption and irresponsibility, allowing the Taliban to maintain its leverage on the situation in the south, southeast and east of the country. Armed groups of rebels are still intentionally attacking the road transport network and making use of their significant influence in rural areas. In the process, the size of these armed groups has increased, which became apparent, for example, in the brief capture of the district administrative centre in the south of Badakhshan that took place in the autumn of 2013. In the short term, a loose division of the spheres of influence is most likely. The Taliban’s position will be strengthened, and it is quite possible that the country will destabilise dramatically and there will be a civil war.

Nevertheless, the US government is showing a profound interest in cooperating with Turkmenistan to implement the TAPI project, suggesting an alternative construction location in a desolate, mountainous area. The security of the pipeline, as planned, will be provided from the air, although according to the Americans themselves, the Afghan Air Force does not have the resources for this. Furthermore, in Pakistan the pipeline needs to be laid around tribal areas where the situation is no less combative than in Afghanistan. In such circumstances, finding investors who are willing to finance work on the vast territories of two extremely unstable countries is incredibly difficult; serious government guarantees are needed. A private consortium, headed by the American company Unocal, refused to be involved in the project’s financing, and the main investor is set to be the government agency USAID. American taxpayers, who last year were paying USD 12 million a day for their troops to stay in Afghanistan, are now going to have to put their hands in their pockets again for the TAPI project, the cost of which is estimated to be USD 8 billion. 

The economic inviability of the TAPI project for the Americans has become particularly evident at the present time. China has made this project useless to the Americans, having become the main decision maker regarding Central Asia’s gas resources. The expropriation of Washington’s plans came about as a result of a contract between the state gas company Turkmengaz and the Chinese company CNPC for the sale of 25 billion cubic metres of gas per year… The deal will bring the total volume of Turkmen gas supplied to China to 65 billion cubic metres. At the same time, agreements have been reached on a proposed new direction for the Turkmenistan-China pipeline (direction D) for additional supplies. Gas agreements have also enabled the approval of a Joint Declaration on Establishing a Strategic Partnership between Turkmenistan and China. The declaration was supported by a cooperation agreement for the financing of the second phase of development at the Galkynysh gas field, as well as a contract for the design and construction of a facility at this location for the production of 30 billion cubic metres of marketable gas per year. By gaining control over the source of raw materials, China has virtually appropriated the TAPI pipeline already. The US does not seem to have any objection. So where does America’s interest lie?

Firstly, following 11 September 2001, Afghanistan became the primary target of America’s global war on terror, while Washington declared that the countries of Central Asia were «frontline states». America’s inability to reach a political settlement in Afghanistan, which is occupied by American troops, and before that in Iraq, raises natural doubts regarding the adequacy of the White House’s strategy. On the eve of the troops’ withdrawal from Afghanistan, there is a growing probability that the instability will move from there to neighbouring countries. Washington is obviously trying to keep the strategic gains it has made in Central Asia by imposing its partnership on Central Asian countries. To withdraw from Afghanistan and lose its influence in the region would be intolerable for America. This applies to Central Asia, to Pakistan, and to Iran. 

Secondly, Iran is also seeking to supply its gas to Pakistan. In March 2013, the presidents of these two countries officially opened the final construction stage of the Peace pipeline. The construction of the Iranian section of the pipeline, the length of which, according to various estimates, is nearly 1150 kilometres, is almost completed, and work has begun to extend the pipe in Pakistan, which will be approximately 780 kilometres in length; the cost of the future work has been estimated at USD 1.5 billion. It is expected that Pakistan will begin to receive gas from the pipeline by December 2014 (exactly the same was planned for the TAPI pipeline). According to the contract signed for 25 years, the Islamic Republic of Iran will export 7.8 billion cubic metres of natural gas to Pakistan every year through the new Iranian pipeline. Tehran is not hiding its own particular interest in realising this project and is willing to make substantial concessions to Pakistan. And now the Americans are objecting. The US Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs, Victoria Nuland, has pointed out that the gas pipeline project between Iran and Pakistan could serve as the reason for new sanctions against both Tehran and Islamabad. Nuland observed that Pakistan has chosen the wrong path by entering into an energy agreement with Iran, and that a penalty in the form of sanctions is unavoidable.

Thirdly, America is consistently true to its desire to prevent the growth of Russia’s international influence. America’s strategic interests in the Central Asia region were stated clearly for the first time in April 1997, in a special report sent to Congress by the State Department. The document indicated that America would not abandon its claims in Central Asia, including with regard to extending and diversifying the world’s energy routes. The contours of such a diversification are obvious: to damage Russia, bypass Iran and harm China. You will recall that the Trans-Caspian Gas Pipeline from Turkmenistan to Azerbaijan appeared in 1996 as an alternative to the Russian-Turkish Blue Stream project. This coincided with America declaring that the Black and Caspian Sea areas were a zone of its strategic interests. At present, the main support for the project is coming from the EU, and the US seems to have receded into the background. Nevertheless, it was the US in August 2010 who gave Azerbaijan nearly USD 2 million to prepare a feasibility study for the project in view of Kazakhstan’s possible involvement in it.

America’s invasion of Afghanistan, one of the most underdeveloped countries in the world, contributed absolutely nothing to the fight against terrorism. After overthrowing the Taliban regime, as much as a quarter of Afghanistan remains under their control. America’s activities in the interests of peace and stability in Afghanistan have essentially come to an end, and the Americans no longer need cooperation in this area from neighbouring powers, including from Russia. The American administration continues to treat Central Asia like a field of strategic competition between the US and neighbouring countries; first and foremost Russia, but now China as well. This is the only reason why America is still suggesting the territory of rebellious Afghanistan as a safe corridor for the transit of energy from the Caspian Sea through Central Asia to Pakistan and India… And why it refuses to see that the mutual distrust of Pakistan and India has brought all talks on energy projects they have been involved in to deadlock, and that alone is turning the TAPI project into a gas pipeline that is going to lead nowhere. 

The ADB will organize the ‘road show’ in the major financial hubs like Singapore, London and New York. The purpose of these events will be principally to gauge the market response to the project, which has so far been living in the secluded privacy of domain belonging to diplomats and politicians. The road show would hopefully help locate oil companies with the requisite technical capability and/or financial base for undertaking the funding and construction of the project, who could form a consortium. 

The United States has voiced enthusiasm for the ‘road show’. «Many American companies are very interested in participating», US assistant secretary of state for South and Central Asia Robert Blake said during his recent regional tour of Central Asia. But he quickly added a caveat. Everything now depends on «what is on offer», he said – «There are a lot of risks to participating in such a pipeline. Part of their [American companies’] consideration will be what kind of incentives Turkmenistan will be prepared to offer international companies to get involved in that project. We will see when the road show takes place». 

Blake acknowledged that the road show would generate «a crucial series of discussions». But he was uncharacteristically reticent in voicing optimism, which could be partly good negotiating tactic and partly echoing reluctance of oil companies worldwide to make major investment decisions in a period of uncertainty regarding the future energy market conditions. Be that as it may, a new dimension has appeared – Big Oil needs to be «incentivized» to participate in the TAPI project. 

What is it that the US companies would expect? More important, who could possibly «incentivize» Big Oil? Conceivably, a good Rate of Return and/or a role in the development of upstream gas reserves in Turkmenistan – or, both – would be found attractive by the American companies. Then, there is the great game over the Caspian energy reserves. No doubt, the US companies would like to get access to the Turkmen gas sector on par with what Chinese companies have secured. As of now, China and Russia are the big players on the Turkmen energy scene with the Western competitors lagging far behind. 

The longstanding US strategy is to encourage multiple pipelines through which the Caspian energy could be evacuated to the world market and, secondly, to facilitate direct energy exports to the Western markets by the region’s producer countries through new pipeline systems. The strategy aimed at reducing Europe’s high dependence on energy supplies from Russia and it is based on geopolitical objectives that trump business realism and practicality and often bordered on wishful thinking. Turkmenistan is a crucial player in this overall strategy – as much as Azerbaijan has been for the past decade and more. 

A grand design

But Russia’s star has been on the wane in Ashgabat for some time and a surge in the Russian energy diplomacy to regain the lost ground doesn’t appear to be yet on the cards. Things can of course dramatically change if the European economies recover and their need of gas imports increases, but the prospect remains uncertain. Meanwhile, the US specialists are getting increasingly nervous about the rapidly expanding Chinese presence in Central Asian energy scene and Turkmenistan in particular. 

Turkmenistan is the anchor sheet of China’s ‘gas diplomacy’ in Central Asia. Beijing proposes to double the volume of Turkmen gas supplies to China to a staggering 65 bcm annually and alongside it is working with the Central Asian countries to create a multiple pipeline system feeding into the Chinese energy grid in Xinjiang. The new transit pipelines will involve the expansion of capacity for the 1830-kilometer pipeline connecting Turkmenistan with Xinjiang via Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan so that it may be having an operating capacity of 30 bcm by next year. Another Chinese proposal is for a new Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Tajikistan-China pipeline or a possible alternate transit line from Kazakhstan via Kyrgyzstan to China. 

The US energy experts estimate that these additional routes are clearly anticipating the prospect of vastly China sourcing increased gas supplies from Turkmenistan way beyond even Beijing’s current stated goal of importing 65 bcm per year by 2015-2015. China is obviously working according to a grand strategy. A US expert wrote recently, 

«China-bound transit pipelines, if built in those three countries [Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan] would boost the total transit capacity for Turkmenistani and other Central Asian gas heading for China; diversify the delivery routes to China of enhanced security of supply, both physically and politically; supply energy-starved Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Afghanistan with agreed lift-off volumes from the gas transit flow; and, give Beijing commercial leverage in negotiating bilaterally with each of these additional transit countries, which, lacking natural gas resources, correspondingly lack counter-leverage». 

This is where TAPI figures in the first circle of the politics of Caspian energy. China would see the TAPI as an imposter on the Turkmen (and regional) energy scene for which Beijing has already choreographed a grand design. This explains why Pakistan and India expect a full-blooded Afghan participation in the TAPI, as was originally agreed in December 2010 when they signed the so-called Framework Agreement and they may not accept any retraction by Kabul at this juncture preferring only a limited role as a mere transit country. 

Strange realignments

However, Kabul seems to be developing second thoughts, and at any rate, negotiations remain inconclusive between Turkmenistan and Afghanistan over their bilateral GSPA. Kabul probably hopes to keep options open to develop its own energy sector in collaboration with China as well. Beijing has proposed to Kabul the brilliant idea to construct a gas pipeline in northern Afghanistan that would head for China via Tajikistan. The Afghan President Hamid Karzai was sounded out on this proposal during the summit meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization held in Beijing in June. A Sino-Afghan working group hopes to flesh out the proposal. 

The heart of the matter is that China has set its sights on the great Bokhtar energy reserves in the Amu Darya basin shared by Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Afghanistan. (Canada’s Tethys Petroleum recently estimated that Bokhtar could have 8.5 billion barrels of oil and 114 trillion cubic feet of gas deposits.) China already secured last December the first contract for oil exploration in the Amu Darya region. The Chinese companies are savvy in promoting business in Kabul. They have big money to invest and they also hold a trump card with their tie-up with the powerful Afghan business group Watan, which is owned by Karzai’s close relatives. 

It should not come as a surprise, therefore, if Kabul prefers to do oil business with China rather than get involved in the TAPI project beyond being a mere transit country. India needs to work on the Afghan government. The trilateral US-Afghanistan-India forum is scheduled to hold its first meeting in the coming weeks and energy cooperation could figure in the agenda. Arguably, there is a congruence of interests between the US and India to encourage a full-blooded Afghan participation in the TAPI. The American and Indian companies are interested in joining hands to exploit Afghanistan’s mineral resources. 

To be sure, the TAPI road show can be expected to induce realignments in regional politics. There is an appreciable degree of harmony today in the Indian and Pakistani approaches with regard to the TAPI project, whereas their acrimonious relationship was previously regarded as the single biggest drawback for the project. Again, Kabul used to be the project’s most enthusiastic votary, but it may soon find the prospect of becoming an energy exporter to the Chinese market more promising and rewarding. In any case, Kabul’s strategic orientation is likely to be toward Central Asia in preference to South Asia. 

Meanwhile, the US, which has been the patron saint of the TAPI since the mid-1990s when it was first conceived, would expect Ashgabat to «incentivise» Big Oil, now that the crunch time is approaching. The US’ intentions toward the TAPI have always been ambivalent, given the high priority it attaches to diverting the Turkmen gas first and foremost to the European market. 

Curiously, it is the ubiquitous Taliban who would seem to be the one constant player, remaining faithfully committed still to the TAPI, which their regime in Kabul keenly sought in the 1990s – despite all that happened since 2001. 

The planned throughput of the 1,700-km Trans-Afghanistan pipeline is currently set to 33 bcm annually, the main target markets being India and Pakistan which are to absorb 14 bcm a year each. The remaining 5 bcm should go to Afghanistan. The route is to pass through Herat and Kandahar in Afghanistan, Quetta and Multan in Pakistan, and to reach Fazilka in India. The Indian cost estimate for the construction is $12b and the resources will be drawn from Galkynysh gas field in Turkmenistan which is currently being sold by Ashgabat as the world's largest.

The invention of the project to construct a pipeline linking the Caspian region and Afghanistan dates back to the Soviet era. The theme was reopened by the US after the collapse of the USSR with the aim of reconfiguring the region's transit network so as to pull apart Russia on the one side and the Central Asia plus the Caucasus on the other. In October, 1995, the construction contract was signed by the US-based Unocal, the Saudi Delta Oil and Co, and the government of Turkmenistan. An international consortium came into being in 1997, but the project never took off the ground as the situation became cloudy in Afghanistan. Though the Talibs supported the project, it had to be put on hold with dim prospects as a result of the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan by the Western coalition.

The Trans-Afghanistan pipeline project was reborn in the late 2000ies, when Ashgabat took to diversifying its gas export routes and the US needed to offer India and Pakistan viable alternatives to gas import from Iran. Gazprom, formerly the main buyer of natural gas from Turkmenistan, suspended transactions with the country in April, 2009 amidst an angry exchange with Ashgabat over the blast which destroyed a section of the Central Asia – Center pipeline. The incident highlighted a deepening rift between Russia and Turkmenistan in the energy sphere. As the global crisis downed the gas prices, buying natural gas at the old cost stopped to make sense for Gazprom, but Turkmenistan staunchly brushed off Russia's requests for lower tariffs. Due to the dispute, gas supplies from Turkmenistan to Russia resumed only in January, 2010, and the corresponding volumes dropped roughly by a factor of four – from 42.8 bcm in 2008 to 10.5 bcm in 2010, with no indications so far that Gazprom would ever shop for more. Estimatedly, the contraction of gas supplies to Russia cost Turkmenistan a quarter of its GDP annually.  

Facing the problem, Turkmenistan had to cultivate alternative gas export avenues. The first phase of the transcontinental Turkmenistan-Uzbekistan-Kazakhstan-China pipeline having the annual capacity of 40 bcm was inaugurated in December, 2009. It was decided in November, 2011 to add 25 bcm to the throughput, with 10 bcm to be contributed by Uzbekistan and 12-15 bcm – by Kazakhstan. A new pipeline stretching from the Dauletabad gas field via Saraghs to Iran's Hangeran was launched in January, 2010 with the aim of giving a boost to natural gas export to Iran from 8 to 20 bcm. It must be noted that the revenues from gas export to China and Iran do not offset Turkmenistan's losses due to the dip in gas trade with Russia since both Beijing and Tehran currently pay much lower prices than Moscow used to. 

Exporting natural gas north, east, and south, Turkmenistan never ignored the western and south-eastern (Afghan) directions. Over the past several weeks, two heavyweight partners – Hungary's MOL and Germany's RWE – opted out of the Nabucco project intended to feed Natural gas from Turkmenistan to Europe. Both cited the legal complexities surrounding pipeline construction underneath the landlocked Caspian Sea. With the outlook for Nabucco increasingly negative, Turkmenistan has to focus on the Trans-Afghanistan pipeline project. In fact, the first attempts to reanimate it were made before Ashgabat's relations with Moscow soured. In July, 2008, a Turkmen-Afghan intergovernmental commission for economic and technical cooperation convened for the first time in Turkmenistan, and Ashgabat seized the opportunity to reiterate its commitment to the Trans-Afghanistan pipeline project. On the occasion, Afghanistan was offered perks in the forms of discount natural gas and electric power tariffs and of assistance in the exploration and development of the oil and gas reserves found in the proximity of the country's border. 

In September, 2010, chiefs of the pertinent Turkmen, Afghan, Pakistani, and Indian ministries signed a framework agreement on the construction of the Trans-Afghanistan pipeline which, however, neither set any specific deadlines nor listed the project funding sources or the future transit tariffs. A question that inevitably came into the spotlight at the time was whether Russia's Gazprom would join the initiative. In October, Igor Sechin, the energy projects curator in the Russian government, said Gazprom was talking to Turkmengaz about taking a role in the Trans-Afghanistan pipeline project but added that no decision existed as to what the role would be. The relations between Russia and Turkmenistan never quite recovered after the incident on the Central Asia – Center pipeline, and the comment released by the Turkmen foreign ministry essentially read that no deals on the issue had been reached. The possibility that Gazprom would still blend in – by buying a share in the project or acting as a contractor – continued to be discussed ever since (even at the presidential level in Moscow in December, 2011), but so far with nothing practical in sight. 

The negotiations over the Trans-Afghanistan pipeline construction intensified by the end of 2011. In November, Turkmen and Pakistani presidents Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow and Asif Ali Zardari met in Islamabad to ink a declaration reaffirming the plan. On May 17, 2012, India's energy sector grand GAIL, backed by the Indian government, signed the Trans-Afghanistan pipeline deal with Turkmenistan. The US Department of State recurrently expressed support for the project, evidently keeping in mind the objective of rendering impractical the alternative route from Iran to India via Pakistan.

It is clear that the biggest problem down the road for the  Trans-Afghanistan pipeline project is security. Most of the pipeline would traverse the Afghan and Pakistani territories which are barely, if at all, controlled by the respective governments. The range of solutions considered included exotic options like paying rent to local tribal militias for maintaining the security of the infrastructure. It should be taken into account as well that the risks confronting the Trans-Afghanistan pipeline project will further escalate with the completion of the US withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2014.