Russia may join pipeline through Taliban: report

The Central Asian nation of Turkmenistan, which sits atop the world's fourth-biggest natural gas reserves, is looking to diversify energy supplies and is pushing to revive plans to build a pipeline to deliver gas from Turkmenistan through Afghanistan to Pakistan and India.
Russia's top energy official, Igor Sechin, told reporters Gazprom was ready to participate in it as a contractor, designer or consortium member, Kommersant business daily reported, referring to the so-called Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) pipeline.
Sechin accompanied President Dmitry Medvedev on a two-day visit to Turkmenistan earlier this week.

"If Gazprom becomes a participant then we will study possibilities of working in gas sales," Sechin was quoted as saying.

"No investor has shown such boldness yet," said the report, noting Gazprom was willing to sink money into a "rather risky project" to weaken Europe's efforts to build a pipeline that would bypass Russia.

In 2002, regional governments agreed to build a,700-kilometre (1,060-mile) pipeline to deliver Turkmen gas to Pakistan and India via Afghanistan but the project stalled because of the raging Taliban insurgency.

The project has gained momentum following a series of recent high-level talks and an August agreement between Turkmenistan and Afghanistan to move the project forward.
Analysts have long said that gas giant Gazprom is a political tool and sometimes the sole purpose of its international deals is to cripple a rival project at the expense of economic sense.