Senior Taliban delegation visits Turkmenistan for TAPI talks

A senior Taliban delegation led by Hedayatullah Badri, the Taliban’s minister of mines and petroleum, traveled to Turkmenistan on Thursday for talks on the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India, or TAPI, gas pipeline project.

The delegation also included Abdul Latif Mansoor, the Taliban’s minister of energy and water, according to a statement from the Taliban administration.

The statement said the discussions covered progress on the pipeline project, land acquisition along the route in Afghanistan, the pricing of natural gas exports and other technical issues related to the project.

The delegation also visited Turkmengaz, Turkmenistan’s state-owned gas company, as well as the Turkmenbashi port and several transit and logistics facilities in Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan, the statement said.

TAPI is one of South Asia’s largest planned energy infrastructure projects. The pipeline is designed to transport natural gas from Turkmenistan through Afghanistan to Pakistan and India.

The project, which was inaugurated under the previous government, is expected to stretch roughly 1,800 kilometers, including about 800 kilometers across Afghanistan, with an annual capacity of approximately 33 billion cubic meters of natural gas.

Taliban have said construction work on Afghanistan section of the pipeline has begun and that the project could generate employment and provide Afghanistan with substantial transit revenues.

However, security concerns, financing challenges and political uncertainty have delayed the project for years.

The visit comes as several senior Taliban officials, including Badri, remain subject to United Nations Security Council sanctions. The UN sanctions committee updated information on several senior Taliban leaders earlier this year, including their chief minister Mohammad Hassan Akhund, deputy chief minister Abdul Ghani Baradar, their foreign minister Amir Khan Muttaqi and Badri.