Iran imports eight billion cubic meters of natural gas from Turkmenistan, just more than half of the contracted volume of 14 bcm a year.
The flow of natural gas from Turkmenistan to Iran was resumed in April after a four-month disruption.
‘During our last winter, we had a stoppage because they (Turkmenistan) had to carry out some emergency maintenance work on its facilities,” the Iranian Deputy Oil Minister, Seyyed Reza Kassaeizadeh, who is also managing Director of the National Iranian Gas Company, told Reuters by telephone from Tehran.
He declined to reveal price details, except to say that they were based on a mutually agreed formula.
Iran gets about 5 percent of its gas needs from Turkmenistan mainly for consumption in its northeastern region, which is far from the country’s southern gas-fields and closer to those of Turkmenistan.
At the time when Turkmenistan halted gas deliveries, the volume of gas Iran imported from Turkmenistan was 23-24 million cubic meters per day.
Iran’s northeastern region struggled with the freezing wintry weather last year, unprecedented in decades, after Turkmenistan halted its gas delivery.
Turkmenistan had cited technical problems as one of the reasons for suspending gas exports to Iran, but at the time Iranian officials said that Ashgabat was also seeking a higher price for the natural gas it supplied to Iran.
Kassaeizadeh noted that the country could possibly have 10 percent of global gas trade in about 20 years, as it had several projects set to come on stream during the period.
MMM/GM
