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India Short-Lists 3 Financial Consultants for Tri-Nation Gas Pipeline

Posted on: Thursday, 25 August 2005, 09:00 CDT

India short-lists 3 financial consultants for tri-nation gas pipeline

NEW DELHI, Aug. 24 (Xinhua) -- KPMG International, Ernst and Young and Standard Chartered Bank are the three financial consultants short-listed by Indian Oil Corp. (IndianOil) for the multi-billion dollar Iran-Pakistan-India gas pipeline project.

"Out of five who had bid, we short-listed these three for making detailed presentations on the international best practices in pipeline projects and their proposals," IndianOil Finance Director S.V. Narasimhan told reporters Wednesday.

"We will finalize the financial consultants by month end or the beginning of September," he said.

The selected consultants would be given time till November to present project models for the execution of the natural gas pipeline project, now estimated to cost over 7 billion US dollars given the rise in input costs of products like steel.

The project design would have to address security concerns, a financing model for the execution of the project and work out a formula for ensuring delivery of natural gas at India's border at a price lower than the imported liquefied natural gas (LNG) among other factors.

India is committed to having in place technical, legal and financial consultants ahead of the second round of the India- Pakistan joint working group meeting in Islamabad next month.

While IndianOil has been given the task of appointing the financial consultant, gas infrastructure major GAIL (India) Ltd. will nominate the technical and legal consultants by month end.

Pakistan is also planning to appoint its own consultants as the three nations work towards finalizing the way forward before end of December.

Source: Xinhua News Agency - CEIS

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