TAPI as part of the Sanctions Policy on Iran.

The rival Pipeline to the TAPI is now targeted as part of the sanctions on Iran. After all, 10 years in Afghanistan has to be of some use and "worth it".

As the Express Tribune reports 9 The Iran Pipeline 28 March 2012 ),

'With Pakistan’s energy crisis becoming ever more grave, the need for power has never been more acute. It was heartening, then, that the president insisted that Pakistan would go ahead with both the Iran gas pipeline and the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) pipeline. As welcome as these words are, there is every chance that they will collide with the immovable forces of superpower politics and the threat of militancy. Of the two proposed pipeline projects, the Iran gas pipeline is by far the more viable option. It is more affordable than the TAPI pipeline and also faces less threat of being blown up by extremists. The TAPI pipeline would run through Herat and Kandahar in Afghanistan and Quetta in Pakistan, which makes the chances of sabotage more of a certainty than a possibility.

'The Iran pipeline, on the other hand, faces the equally deadly American veto. The US, through Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, has already floated the threat of sanctions should Pakistan go through with the proposal. The US has also been making use of back channels to put funding for the project into peril. A Chinese bank withdrew its promise of money for the pipeline after quiet US intervention'. ( my italics ).

Also reported is US interest in securing for US firms a stake in constructing the TAPI Pipeline,

'“A couple of major US oil companies are interested,” said Daniel Stein, senior advisor to the special envoy for Eurasian Energy in the United States. “We would like to see a US company involved at some point in TAPI.” He declined to name the companies. TAPI is considered to be consistent with US’s declared policy of linking Central and South Asia and diversifying export routes for Turkmen gas'...