"We discussed a number of subjects including legal, financial, technical and commercial issues relating to the project and made good progress and understood each other's positions. We are progressing very well," Sushil Chand Tripathy, petroleum secretary said in Islamabad after the first round of the two-day talks with his Pakistani counterpart Ahmed Waqar.
The petroleum secretary-level talks were taking place under the second round of the Joint Working Group meeting.
"We are moving towards finalising the issues by the end of the current year so that by December 31 we can have framework agreement among the three countries in support of the project and the project structure can be developed after which the consortium can take up the project and go to financial institutions and implement it," Tripathi said.
He, however, said a trilateral set-up involving Iran also could take a while as legal and technical consultants have not been appointed.
"We are in the process of selecting them. We have to study various other trans-national projects to determine the legal, technical and commercial and financial arrangements.
That will take time. We are racing against time to be able to put it together by December 31," he said.
Tripathi said India and Pakistan developed convergence on working out a joint pricing structure to propose to Iran, which was quoting much higher prices.
