Azerbaijan, Baku, Oct.6/ Trend F.Milad/
Iran has increased the volume of gas exports to Turkey to 30 million cubic meters (mcm) per day as a blast halted gas exports from Azerbaijan to Turkey, the Mehr News Agency quoted Majid Boujarzadeh, the National Iranian Gas Company's spokesman as saying on Saturday.
"The explosion on the Turkish section of the Baku-Tbilisi-Erzurum (BTE) pipeline transporting Azerbaijani gas to Turkey resulted from a terror act," the Turkish energy ministry told Trend news agency on Thursday.
BP Azerbaijan, operator of the Azerbaijani offshore Shah Deniz field, which produces gas transported via the BTE pipeline, told Trend news agency that at the request of the Turkish pipeline company Botas, gas supply to the company's system was suspended.
"Whenever the flow of gas exports into Turkey faces a problem, Iran will be ready to make for the reduced imports," Boujarzadeh said.
On September 4, Iranian Oil Minister Rostam Qasemi held talks with Turkish Development Minister Cevdet Yilmaz in Tehran with the main topic of increasing exports of Iranian gas to its neighboring country.
On Friday, Iran's Oil Minister Rostam Qasemi told journalists in Turkey that the countries are discussing the options for transferring Iranian gas to Europe, through Turkey.
"The third section of the sixth cross country gas pipeline of Iran, which is aimed to export natural gas to Europe via Turkey, is around 48 percent complete," Alireza Gharibi, the managing director of Iran's Gas Engineering and Development Company, said earlier.
Once the pipeline comes on stream, it will have the capacity to transfer 100 million cubic meters of gas per day.
However, the economic feasibility of the Southern Gas Corridor and in particular the construction of 300 km of pipes beneath the waters of the Caspian Sea (Trans-Caspian gas pipeline), is said to be cheaper and shorter.
A meeting of senior representatives of energy ministries of Azerbaijan, Turkey, Turkmenistan and the EU Energy Commissioner Günther Oettinger, was held earlier this week in Ashgabat and was another step in the achievement of this goal. The main issue in the talks was the implementation of the Trans-Caspian gas pipeline.