KARACHI: Iran and Pakistan are looking at ways to complete a long-delayed gas pipeline project between the two countries, Iran’s Consul General to Pakistan, Hassan Nourian, said on Monday.

“We see political determination from Pakistan to complete the project,” he told reporters in the southern city of Karachi.

The countries signed an agreement to construct the pipeline from Iran’s South Fars gas field to Pakistan’s Balochistan and Sindh provinces in 2010, but work on Pakistan’s portion has been held up due to fears of US sanctions.

The 1,900 kilometer (1,180 mile) pipeline was meant to supply 750 million to one billion cubic feet per day of natural gas for 25 years to meet Pakistan’s rising energy needs.

Tehran says it has invested $2 billion to construct the pipeline on its territory. Pakistan, however, did not begin construction, citing international sanctions on Iran as the reason.

In 2014, Islamabad asked for a 10-year extension to build the pipeline, which expires in September this year. Iran can take Pakistan to international court, industry watchers have said.

Faced with potential legal action, Pakistan’s caretaker administration this year gave the go ahead in principal to commence plans to build an 80km segment of the pipeline.

In March, Islamabad said it would seek a US sanctions waiver for the pipeline. The US, however, said it did not support the project and cautioned about the risk of sanctions in doing business with Tehran.

Nourian on Monday said the pipeline did not come under international restrictions, and that the two countries were discussing the issue.

He did not answer a question about the potential for Iran to take legal action against Pakistan if it did not complete its side of the pipeline this year.

Pakistan, whose domestic and industrial users rely on natural gas for heating and energy needs, is in dire need for cheap gas with its own reserves dwindling fast and LNG deals making supplies expensive amidst high inflation.

Iran has the world’s second-largest gas reserves after Russia, according to BP’s Statistical Review of World Energy, but sanctions by the West, political turmoil and construction delays have slowed its development as an exporter.

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s top court on Monday suspended a verdict by the Peshawar High Court (PHC) that a party aligned with candidates backed by former premier Imran Khan was not eligible for reserved seats in the legislature, a blow for the country’s coalition government headed by Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif. 

Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party couldn’t contest the Feb. 8 elections under its traditional electoral symbol, a cricket bat, which it was denied on technical grounds. The PTI subsequently struck an alliance with another party, the Sunni Ittehad Council (SIC), in a bid to secure reserved seats for women and minorities in parliament. 

Under Pakistan’s election rules, political parties are allotted reserved seats in proportion to the number of parliamentary seats they win in the election. This completes the National Assembly’s total strength of 336 seats.

The Election Commission had ruled in March that the SIC was not eligible for reserved seats, a decision the alliance had appealed in the PHC, which also rejected it. The SIC then approached the Supreme Court to appeal the high court’s decision. 

A three-member bench of the top court took up the SIC’s petition for hearing on Monday. 

“The Supreme Court has suspended the Election Commission’s order and the Peshawar High Court’s order,” PTI Chairman Gohar Khan, who is also Khan’s lawyer, told reporters outside the top court after it rejected the PHC verdict. “This is a vindication of our stance.”

He said the Supreme Court had also barred members of other political parties elected on reserved seats that should have been allotted to the SIC from casting their votes for or against any legislation.

The PTI leader said the SIC had been deprived of 67 reserved seats for women and 11 parliamentary seats for minorities. After losing 78 reserved seats, PM Sharif’s coalition government had lost its two-thirds majority, he added. 

Khan, who is in jail following a string of convictions, and his PTI say the party was stripped of its bat symbol as a ruse to undermine its popularity and keep it from winning a maximum number of seats in general elections. 

In February, an agreement between Bhutto Zardari’s Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) and the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) of three-time Premier Nawaz Sharif ended days of uncertainty and negotiations after the Feb. 8 elections produced a hung national assembly.

The PML-N’s 79 and the PPP’s 54 seats together made a simple majority in parliament to form a government and they also roped in smaller parties in the coalition.

Candidates backed by Khan won 93 seats but did not have the numbers to form a government. He and his party have rejected the results of the elections, alleging widespread rigging.