Iran, Greece to negotiate gas deal in Athens

A new round of talks for exporting Iran's gas to Greece will be held this week in the Greek capital, Athens, after the Turkish government announced its official agreement to transit Iranian gas to Europe, Press TV reported.

The new development came after the failure of negotiations on the construction of the Nabucco gas pipeline which prompted some European companies to officially ask for importing Iran's natural gas.

The Nabucco pipeline is a proposed natural gas pipeline which starts from Turkey's Erzurum to end in Austria's Baumgarten an der March and aims to reduce Europe's gas dependence on Russia.

On February 4, Iran's Oil Minister Rostam Qasemi told reporters that the Turkish government and parliament have passed a plan to transit Iran's natural gas to Europe.

He added that Iran is in talks with Switzerland and Greece over gas exports, noting that the Islamic Republic is facing no problem for exporting gas to Europe.

Meanwhile, Managing Director of the National Iranian Gas Company Javad Oji said in late April that Turkey has indicated its readiness to transit Iran's gas to Europe.

"The existing gas pipeline [to Turkey] has enough capacity for daily export of 36 million cubic meters of [natural] gas," he added.

The official noted that 26 million cubic meters per day of Iran's gas is taken up by Turkey and the remaining 10 million cubic meters per day can be exported to Switzerland and other European countries.

Iran is currently capable of producing 600 million cubic meters per day of gas and the figure is expected to exceed 1.4 billion cubic meters per day by the end of the Fifth Economic Development Plan (2011-2015).

Iran's present share of global gas trade stands at about 2 percent and the Iranian Oil Ministry is planning to raise that figure to 10 percent by signing new gas deals.