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Turkmenistan-South Asia pipeline gets $200M investment

ASHGABAT, Turkmenistan (AP) — An ambitious project to build a natural gas pipeline from Turkmenistan to Afghanistan, Pakistan and India has received $200 million in new investment. Under an agreement signed Thursday in the Turkmen capital, the investment comes from Turkmenistan's state gas company, Interstate Gas Systems of Pakistan, Afghan Gas Enterprise and India's GAIL. Turkmenistan already has begun construction of a pipeline section to the Afghan border. Deputy Prime Minister Yagshigeldy Kakayev said that "the signing of this document opens the way for the consortium for further work." He said the money will go toward detailed engineering work on determining the pipeline's route and environmental investigations.