“India’s energy requirement is quite substantial and we have to locate various sources of energy, including nuclear,” said India’s External Affair Minister Pranab Mukherjee while addressing a top level joint ministerial meeting of India and Iran in Tehran on Sunday.
Addressing a seminar on “India and Iran: Ancient civilisations and modern nations”, Mukherjee who was on a two-day official visit to Iran, for solving the conflict between both the nations regarding the Iran-Pakistan-India (IPI) gas pipe line and to pave the way of convening the trilateral oil ministerial meeting, said that India’s energy requirement is very vast and it needs various sources of energy including nuclear energy.
He was responding over the comparison of India-US nuclear deal and IPI gas pipeline project. Stressing the need of both sources of energy, he said that India’s 50 percent energy requirements are fulfilled by coal and fossils fuels, and now these fuel sources have been decaying rapidly, while oil prices is rising sharply. So, India has no alternative source of energy but to develop the nuclear energy.
Relating Indo-US civil nuclear deal and the proposed IPI gas pipeline, Mukherjee said that the basic imperative of both the agreements was to secure the source of energy.
The two-day bilateral meet was concluded on Sunday, and it was decided to set up a trilateral mechanism at the Petroleum Ministers’ level to resolve the differences over this project including transit fee and security matter.
Iran wants the security guarantee to India as the IPI gas pipe line is proposed to pass throughout Pakistan while the Indo-Pak relationship is not considered so sweet on international level, but India has ensured Iran not to worry about security concern as India has already persuade Pakistan about the security matter of this US 7.4 billion project from which Pakistan would also get benefit by sharing the equivalent portion of Liquefied Petroleum gas.
The matter of transit fee is still unsolved, as per sources, but Indian External Minister is optimistic to solve this matter in the next ongoing trilateral meet.
On the matter of investment in India, Mukherjee asked Iran to enhance the ratio of investment in India especially in the oil and natural gas sector while Indian government and corporate sector would also enhance investment in Iran.
According to sources, the text of a Bilateral Investment Promotion and Protection Agreement (BIPPA) has been ready and would be signed soon.
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