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Russian official says final contract on Pakistan North-South pipeline will be signed soon

The statement was issued following the talks betweenRussia's Rostec general director Sergey Chemezov and Pakistani Natural Resources Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi

MOSCOW, January 21. /TASS/. A commercial agreement between RT-Global Resources, which is part of Russian state corporation Rostec and ISGSL for the construction of the North-South gas pipeline in Pakistan will be signed in the near future, Rostec said in a statement on Thursday.

The statement was issued following the talks between Rostec general director Sergey Chemezov and Pakistani Natural Resources Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi.

"By now a preliminary agreement on construction of the North-South gas pipeline has been signed. This project should be completed before the end of 2017. Today commercial issues were discussed with Minister Abbasi and in the near future a final contract will be signed," Chemezov said.

During the talks the parties marked with satisfaction the progress in the project of the pipeline. On the current stage, "RT-Global Resources" conducted an initial engineering study of the project, worked with the project documentation, finalized financial parameters of the calculation formula of the tariff for pumping. Currently, the work on defining the route of the pipeline is under way.

According to Chemezov, the project offers a number of opportunities for Russian companies. "We are considering a possibility of using gas-pumping equipment manufactured by ODK, Tekhnopromexport is ready to build a thermal power plant, Kamaz is ready to supply vehicles," - he said.

The intergovernmental agreement for the construction of the North-South pipeline was signed on October 16, 2015. RT-Global Resources will carry out the construction of the pipeline in Pakistan by mid-2020.According to Rostec, the construction will cost about $2-2.5 billion.

The 1,100 km long gas pipeline will link liquefied natural gas  terminals in the port of Karachi in the south of Pakistan with the city of Lahore in the north of the country.

The period of construction is 42 months. The project will be implemented in three stages. On the first stage, by the second quarter of 2018, the gas pipeline will be built.

On the second stage, by the second quarter of 2019, part of compressor stations will be completed.

On the third stage, by the second quarter of 2020, all compressor stations will be commissioned bringing the pipeline to its full capacity, which is 12.4 billion cubic meters a year.