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The long awaited Myanmar-Bangladesh-India (MBI) pipeline has been dodged by regional geopolitics and political constraints between India and Bangladesh. First proposed in 1997, the 900 km pipeline was set to deliver 5 billion cubic meters of gas from the Swe field in Southern Myanmar to West Bengal via Tripura, Mizoram and Bangladesh. Sixteen years later, the pipeline remains comatose, and shows little signs of becoming a reality. Located in close proximity to India, Myanmar’s estimated 90 trillion cubic feet gas reserves offered an efficient means of securing India’s energy needs and thus had been envisaged as a salient component of its energy security policy. However, Bangladeshi roadblocks led to an impasse and subsequently the gas from gas reserves were allotted to China instead. Now at a time when Myanmar has again called for bids on 30 of its offshore blocks India must be proactive to tap into the energy source in a timely manner and be prepared to bypass Bangladesh if the need arises.
The Bangladesh Roadblock
The MBI project reached an impasse in 2005 after Bangladesh put forward preconditions that were unacceptable to India. Bangladesh’s intractable demands at that time included: a custom-free passage to and from Nepal and Bhutan, a customs-free passage for hydro-electricity transmission lines to and from Nepal and Bhutan and the onus to reduce its trade deficits with India. Vary of setting a wrong precedent for future bilateral negotiations, India did not concede to any of the demands.
Bangladesh’s proposed redressal has been attributed to two major factors, the first being the gross overestimation of Bangladesh’s gas reserves. With an estimated reserve of 2 trillion cubic meters of gas the government did not see the salience of the pipeline in 2005. Second, the BNP led coalition government that was in office at that time was vocally anti-India and thus had its hesitations in collaborating with India.
In the long run however, gas economics overruled domestic political game play. Since 2005 Bangladesh has constantly had a shortfall of gas due to its inability to tap into its gas reserves. Therefore the BNP’s 2007 initiative to renegotiate the pipeline was not surprising. The pro-India Awami League party that came into power in 2010 approved the pipeline project in 2010. India too amped its diplomatic efforts and in order to insulate itself from another change in government, at the risk of upsetting sitting Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, has also been courting opposition leader Begum Khaleda Zia’s.
China-Myanmar energy engagement
However, the move to fix the political dysfunction came a little too late. China surpassed India and Bangladesh in securing Myanmar’s energy resources. The MOU for a 2,388 km pipeline from Kyakphu in Myanmar to China’s Yunnan province that was signed in 2008 came into fruition this July. The Myanmar-China pipeline is set to supply 6.5 trillion cubic feet of gas from Block A1 (Shwe field and Shwephyu field) and block A3 (Mya field) to China over the next 30 years. Heralded as a major accomplishment in China-Myanmar bilateral ties, the pipeline has reduced China’s dependence on the Malacca strait, the main transit point for its oil imports. This has been a major debacle in India’s gas line diplomacy as it lost its preferential buyer status in the A1 and A3 offshore natural gas in Myanmar to PetroChina.
Prospects for energy cooperation
Although there have been marked improvements in India-Bangladesh bilateral relations since 2009 India must be cautious of Bangladesh’s ambivalence on energy cooperation, especially if there is a change in government during the upcoming elections. Opposition leader Begum Khaleda Zia who has warmed up to Indian diplomatic efforts snubbed India by canceling a meeting with Pranab Mukherjee during his visit to Dhaka in March this year. India must be prepared to go alone and the rerouted line from Myanmar through Mizoram, Tripura and Assam into Kolkata should be traversed – in order to safeguard against another retrenchment.
With the slated 2015 completion of the Kaladan Multi-Modal Transit Transport Project there is a feasibility of building a pipeline upto Mizoram. The Kaladan Project is a combined inland waterway and highway transportation system that will connect Mizoram with a deep-sea port at Sittwe in Western Myanmar. Along with the roadway a pipeline could traverse.
Even if the pipeline only comes to Northeast India it would provide the northeastern states of India a scope for developing industries; alongside the gas pipeline power-plants fertilizer plants and other industries could be set up. Especially in a province like Mizoram that is relatively peaceful.
India must pragmatically continue to engage with Bangladesh on connecting the pipeline from Mizoram to Kolkata. The advantage of going through Bangladesh is that the spare gas from Bangladesh can also be harnessed as well as a large number of Indian investments can take place in Bangladesh. At the same time, we must also be prepared to bypass Bangladesh knowing that Bangladesh’s implicit susceptibility to negotiate decreases when it knows that it does not have the leverage it previously had.
Reference
Ali, Saleem. "Myanmar, Bangladesh and India: Prospects for Energy Cooperation."News, 13 July 2013.
Chandra, Varigonda Kesava. "Journal of Energy Security." Journal of Energy Security, 19 Apr. 2012.
Kasturi, Charu Sudan. "Delhi Doesn’t Lose Sleep as Khaleda Scores." The Telegraph, 25 June 2013. Web. 2013.
Sidhartha. "India May Get Myanmar Gas Bypassing Bangladesh." The Times of India, 07 June 2013. Web.
The author is a Research Intern at CLAWS
Views expressed are personal
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