Caretaker Cabinet Okays Gas Pipeline Project With Iran

The caretaker federal cabinet has approved the Pakistan-Iran Gas Pipeline project. The federal cabinet adopted a summary whereby the 1,931-kilometer-long gas pipeline will be finished in one year and cost $158 million. At full length, 1,150 kilometers of the pipeline will be laid in Iran and the rest in Pakistan. This comes roughly a month after Iran extended the deadline for the pipeline project by 180 days to September 2024. Iran warned its neighbor that it would petition the Paris-based International Arbitration and demand an $18 billion penalty from Pakistan if the case goes to arbitration. Iran previously requested Pakistan in a notice in November-December 2022 to build a segment of the Iran-Pakistan Gasline project on its territory by February-March 2024 or face a $18 billion fine. Before that, Tehran notified Islamabad in February 2019 that it would seek arbitration for failing to install the pipeline within the timeframe specified in the pipeline project.