Iran, Turkmenistan to set gas export price

The delegation headed by Turkemngaz Chairman Baymyrat Hojamuhammedov, will stay in Iran until April 18, SHANA reported.

Turkmenistan has been supplying gas to Iran since 1997, but exports have never hit the Korpeje-Kurt Kui pipeline’s full capacity of 8 billion cubic meters (bcm) per year, a report from the Russian newspaper Vremya said, adding that exports have not exceeded 6.5 bcm.

Turkmenistan is contracted to send an additional 10 bcm to Iran in 2009.

In mid-March, Iran and Russia signed a gas swap deal that would see Gazprom assume responsibility for the delivery of Turkmen gas to Iran. Ashgabat would benefit from this arrangement since Russia would purchase Turkmen gas at a premium price.

Iran currently pays $140 per thousand cubic meters (tcm); Gazprom is willing to buy the same gas for re-export from Ashgabat for $240/tcm. Russia is more willing to access to natural gas supplies in Iran’s South Pars field, which holds an estimated 8 percent of the world’s natural gas reserves.

Ties between the two energy powers were strained in winter 2008 after Turkmenistan halted gas sales to Iran, but during an official visit by Turkmen leader Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov to Tehran in February 2009, the two sides inked an agreement which would allow Iran to develop the Yolatan gas field in Turkmenistan and import 350 billion cubic feet of the extracted gas annually.

According to the Turkmen Foreign Ministry, since establishing diplomatic relations in 1992, the two countries have signed more than 170 documents. The Ashgabat-based Russian-language newspaper Neitralnyi Turkmenistan reports that bilateral trade between Iran and Turkmenistan in 2008 reached $3 billion.

Iran sits atop the world’s second-largest natural gas reserves after Russia, and has long sought to promote itself as a transit route for oil and gas from central Asian states.

Turkmenistan, Central Asia’s biggest gas producer, is seen as one of the key suppliers for the planned Nabucco pipeline from Turkey to Austria, designed to ease Europe’s dependence on Russia for gas supplies.

MG/MRK

END

MNA