Pakistan negotiates North-South gas pipeline’s BOOT agreement with Russia

Pakistani and Russian experts are in process of holding negotiations on Build-Operate-Own-Transfer (BOOT) agreement to lay an 1100 kilometer gas pipeline from Lahore to Karachi (North-South) for which the two countries had signed an intergovernmental accord two years back.

The project, costing around $ 2 billion, is facing delay due to some international sanctions on Russian company RT-Global Resources.

“The actual construction on the pipeline will start after finalization of the contractual arrangement. Currently, the parties are negotiating the BOOT agreement. Pakistan has already communicated that any structure/arrangement needs to be sanctions free,” official sources told APP.

Answering a question, they also informed that the matter of US sanctions on the company was discussed with the Russian authorities, while the proposed solution by the Russian side was under evaluation by the Ministries of Energy and Law.

The sources said the agreement was signed on government-to-government level and not with any individual, adding “If any Russian company had been blacklisted under any international sanction, Pakistan has nothing to do with it as Russia can assign the task to someone else.”