However, according to the Pakistan Minister for Petroleum and Natural Resources, Chaudhry Nauraiz Shakoor, an Iran to Pakistan pipeline should be a go after the Iranian government agreed to export natural gas to Pakistan.

According to Shakoor, "Technical experts from Pakistan and Iran would meet in about 2 months to discuss the route and other details related to laying a pipeline in the two countries."

The failure of the original pipeline - despite having been mooted for over a decade - has been attributed to India's wariness of having an important source of energy passing through the borders of a country with which it has had three wars and an atomic standoff last year.

Despite a thawing of the frosty relations between the two countries - and India's need for natural gas to fuel its fast developing industrial and domestic consumption - some fears are not as easy to dispel off than others.