Baku, Azerbaijan, Oct.11
By Temkin Jafarov - Trend:
Iran has great potential and technical opportunities to increase gas supply to Turkey, Amir Abbas Soltani, first secretary of Iranian parliament's energy commission exclusively told Trend.
The country also has technical potential to export its gas to European countries, he added.
Soltani said currently, Iran can meet 8-9 percent of the world market's demand for natural gas and expressed regret that the sanctions didn't allow Iran to use this potential.
Tehran always expresses readiness to cooperate with all countries which want to import Iranian gas, he noted.
Touching upon the relations between Iran and Turkey, Soltani pointed out that before the imposition of sanctions by the West, Ankara and Tehran had close bilateral relations.
Furthermore, he said that Ankara's policy towards Syria and opening its military base for the US would inevitably affect the relations between Turkey and Iran.
But the two countries have cultural, religious ties with the help of which the disagreements between them can be settled, according to the MP.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan earlier said that if necessary, his country can purchase gas not only from Russia but also from other sources.
Turkey has contracts with Iran on supplying 10 billion cubic meters of gas per year, with Russia - 20 billion cubic meters of gas and with Azerbaijan - 6.6 billion cubic meters of gas.
Turkey also has an agreement with Algeria and Nigeria for supplying 4.4 billion and 1.2 billion cubic meters of liquefied natural gas, respectively per year.
Edited by SI
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