INDIA has indicated that it would reject conditions sought by Bangladesh for allowing a proposed pipeline to carry natural gas across its territory from a gas field off Rakhine State.

The state-owned Press Trust of India reported on July 9 that India’s External Affairs Ministry was opposed to the conditions sought by Dhaka, which include allowing it to import electricity from Nepal and Bhutan through India.

“Under no circumstances should India accept any of the conditions ... that will encourage Dhaka to tie up unrelated conditionality in future negotiations on other issues...,” an unnamed official at the ministry was quoted as saying by PTI.

The comment came after India’s Minister for Petroleum and Natural Gas, Mr Mani Shankar Aiyar, said New Delhi would continue talks with Bangladesh for a trilateral agreement on the pipeline, despite an agreement by India and Myanmar to consider alternative options for supplying the gas from the A1 field.

The agreement to seek alternative options came at a meeting between Mr Aiyar and his Myanmar counterpart, Brigadier-General Lun Thi, in New Delhi on July 6. It followed delays affecting the start of work on the pipeline due to the conditions set by Bangladesh.

The alternative options include a pipeline that bypasses Bangladesh and supplying the gas to India in liquefied form. The options are to be discussed by a trilateral technical committee in Yangon later this month.

Mr Aiyar told PTI that the pipeline would be twice as long if it bypassed Bangladesh.

A senior Indian energy official said last week that the bypass option would be considerably more expensive.

“If we can get the pipeline through Bangladesh, the carrying cost would drastically come down. Alternatively, the pipeline has to come via Tripura or under the Bay of Bengal, which would incur huge expenses,” the managing director of the state-owned Gas Authority of India Limited, Mr Prosanta Banerjee, told India’s Statesman newspaper on July 11.

Meanwhile, Bangladesh’s Minister of State for Energy, Mr Mahmudur Rahman, told AFP on July 7 that Dhaka was willing to restart talks with India on the trilateral pipeline.

“We’ve an open mind and we are waiting for a signal from New Delhi to restart the talks,” Mr Rahman said.

The A1 field is being developed by a consortium headed by the South Korean conglomerate, Daewoo International, which has a 60 per cent share in the venture. The Gas Authority of India Ltd., and India’s state-owned Oil and Natural Gas Corporation, have a 10 per cent and 20 per cent share respectively. South Korea’s state-owned KOGAS has the remaining 10 per cent.