Agence France Presse — English
July 27, 2005 Wednesday 7:33 PM GMT
Ukraine to buy Iranian gas
TEHRAN July 27
Iran has agreed to export up to 30 billion cubic meters (one trillion
cubic feet) of natural gas to Ukraine per year, a senior Iranian oil
ministry official told state radio on Wednesday.
“Ukraine has shown its willingness to purchase 20 to 30 billion cubic
meters (700 billion to 1 trillion cubic feet) of gas per year from
Iran for its domestic consumption,” Iranian Deputy Oil Minister Hadi
Nejad-Hosseinian said.
“Ukraine also agreed to export up to 20 billion cubic meters (700
billion cubic feet) of our gas to Europe through its own
installations,” according to the memorandum of understanding signed
last week, he added.
“Both countries are going to invite the countries on the way of the
pipeline like Georgia, Armenia and Russia to a conference in Tehran
in mid-September to talk about a pipeline and how to carry it out,”
the oil official added.
He did not elaborate on the deal’s financial worth.
Nejad-Hosseinian said that striking the deal with Ukraine solved
Iran’s problem of selling its gas to Europe through its western
neighbor, Iraq.
He added that Turkish involvement in Iranian gas exports to Europe
was no longer needed.
“The problem we had with Turkey was that they thought that the only
way for Iranian gas to reach Europe was through their territories,”
he said.
“They said they were not ready to transport Iranian gas export to
Europe, telling us that they would buy it from us and re-sell it.”
Iran holds 18 percent of the world’s proven gas reserves with 28
trillion cubic meters (980 trillion cubic feet) of natural gas, and
is second only to Russia.