Iran, Oman in Technical Talks on Construction of Gas Pipeline

The Managing Director of the Iranian Gas Engineering and Development Company (IGEDC) said talks have begun for construction of gas pipeline to Oman ( Gas Exports to Oman ) and it is in the early stages and technical and executive stage.

Reza Noshadi went on to say that the basic engineering studies of the project for construction of gas pipeline for exporting gas to Oman have already been conducted and now both sides are in the stage of beginning technical and executive talks. However, Oman is affected by the political issues. if it is resolved, both sides have announced readiness for talks, and a workgroup can be formed to implement the project.

Regarding cooperation with Qatar on joint gas production and export to Europe, he admitted that its materialization is difficult, and first he needs to elaborate why war in Syria broke out.

Iran was supposed to launch a gas pipeline to get through Iran, Iraq and Syria to Europe. However, Syria and Iraq are not safe now, and Iran is not able to implement the project for exporting gas to Europe. Therefore, Iran’s gas can only be consumed in Iraq.

Noshadi added that Qatar unlikely would welcome the idea of joint cooperation for constructing a gas pipeline to Europe because major part of its partners in gas production contracts are western companies and they will not welcome this idea.

Noshadi said that even Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India decided to carry out the TAPI gas pipeline with spending billions of dollars but not willing to trade with Iran. Iran is able to take gas from Turkmenistan and transfer it to Azerbaijan but again they intend to implement Trans-Caspian project in the depth of Caspian Sea water but not to cooperate with Iran, he added.

He went on to say that Iran currently has electricity and gas exchange contracts with its neighboring countries like Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Turkey, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Nakhichevan and Turkmenistan. Iran has reached a maturation in gas network developments and with considering the current markets it does not need to construct new pipelines.

On Cooperation with Kurdistan of Iraq for exporting gas, he said that there is no problem in this regard but before anything else, first the political issues should be resolved between Iran and Iraq’s Kurdistan. Iran holds needed technologies for gas project developments and gas exports to Kurdistan. – Iran News