TEHRAN -- Iran and Pakistan will hold the last round of the Peace Pipeline talks in Tehran next week, the special representative of Iran’s oil minister to the talks said here on Sunday.

The Mehr News Agency quoted Hojjatollah Ghanimifard as saying that a Pakistani delegation headed by Pakistani Federal Minister of Petroleum and Natural Resources Asim Hussain is to arrive in Tehran on May 23 to finalize the Peace Pipeline deal based on the new price formula suggested by Iran and approved by Pakistan’s cabinet on April 10.
“The two sides are to set the date of signing the final contract in the meeting,” he added.
Pakistan will import as much as 750 million cubic feet of gas per day from Iran to meet its growing energy needs.
The Iran–Pakistan–India gas pipeline, also known as the IPI pipeline or the Peace Pipeline, is a proposed 2,775-kilometer pipeline to deliver natural gas from Iran to Pakistan and India.
The project is expected to greatly benefit India and Pakistan, which do not have sufficient natural gas to meet their rapidly increasing domestic demand for energy.
The negotiations over the project were initiated in 1994 but there are still several obstacles to closing the three-way deal due to tension between India and Pakistan