Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) pipeline, rates which New Delhi finds too high to accept. Turkmenistan recently told the Centre that it wanted a price of US$400-450 per thousand cubic meter (about US$12.7 per million British thermal unit) for the gas from its Dauletabad fields, an oil ministry official said, reported Financial express.

After adding transportation charges and transit fee payable to Afghanistan and Pakistan, the delivered price of Turkmen gas in India will be close to US $18 per MMBTU, a far cry from the US $4.21 per MMBTU price the government approved for Reliance Industries'' eastern offshore D6 field last year. Gas from rival Iran-Pakistan-India will come at $5.56 per MMBTU. New Delhi on its part has offered to give US $200-230 per thousand cubic meter price to Turkmenistan, the official said.

Turkmenistan has warned that it may opt for competing projects to Russia, China and European Union if contracts for TAPI are not concluded in time, he said. The Central Asian nation says its price quote was in sync with the rates it was expecting from Russia from 2009.

Gas producers around the world are increasingly benchmarking gas prices to crude oil and say the cleaner fuel should get 16% of the prevailing oil rates. The Asian Development Bank (ADB)-backed TAPI project is to supply 35-40 million standard cubic meter per day of gas to India from 2014.