IRAN-SWITZERLAND CONTRACT GAS EXPORT

ISNA, Iran
Iranian Students News Agency
Dec 27 2006

TEHRAN, Dec.27 (ISNA)-Iran agrees with Swiss companies call for
receiving 0.5-4.5 billion cubic meters of Iran’s gas for contracted
markets like Italy.

"The first phase of the main agreements are contracted," informed
Iran’s national gas export company director, Nasrollah Seifi while
saying that Iran-Swiss gas transfer would take place through the
Turkey pipeline.

He went on to state that Austrian and Syrian companies also called
for Iran’s gas export contract.

When asked by an ISNA reporter that if there was a possibility that
Turkey would export Iran’s gas to Israel, Seifi responded that Iran
would make sure that the entire gas export amount to Turkey would be
consumed only in that country.

"Also Iran’s export is much lesser than what is estimated in the
Iran-Turkey contract. For example, this year 9 billion cubic meters
should be transferred to Turkey while the real amount transferred is
something about 7 billion cubic meters and sometimes as Turkey reports,
it downs to about 5 billion," he added.

He also noted the 10 billion cubic meters Iran-Turkey gas export and
the 14 billion cubic meters Turkmenistan-Iran gas import.

"We’ve got an annual record of 4 billion cubic meters gas import. We
predict that with the initiation of Iran-Armenia 0.5-3 billion cubic
meters gas export, Iran’s export and import become equally balanced,"
he concluded.