Kabul, Afghanistan — The Taliban-run Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs has announced a public holiday in Herat for Wednesday, Sept. 11, to mark what it is calling the “launch” of the TAPI gas pipeline project.
The ministry’s statement noted that Turkmen officials would also attend the inauguration ceremony.
The TAPI (Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India) pipeline project was originally inaugurated in March 2018 under former President Ashraf Ghani.
The agreement for the project was signed in January 2016 by the leaders of Afghanistan, Turkmenistan, Pakistan, and India.
The pipeline is estimated to stretch 1,814 kilometers, with 816 kilometers passing through Afghanistan. Once completed, it is expected to have the capacity to transport 33 billion cubic meters of natural gas annually.
However, despite the project’s initial inauguration in Afghanistan in 2018, it has seen no progress on the Afghan section since that time.
