Baku, Azerbaijan, Sept. 23
By Umid Niayesh - Trend:
Iran eyes to increase its natural gas exports to 80 billion cubic meters per year till 2022, Saeed Ghavampour, director for Strategic Planning of the Iran's Oil Ministry said.
Ghavampour noted that the country's current gas exports volume amounts for 10-12 billion cubic meters per year, Iran's ISNA news agency reported Sept. 23.
However he underlined that the country's gas imports volume is also very close to the exported volume without unveiling any figure.
Nosratollah Seifi, former managing Director of the National Iranian Gas Export Company, said last October that the Islamic Republic exports approximately 9 billion cubic meters of gas per year, while the gas import figure stands at 10 billion cubic meters.
Iran exported 7.5 billion cubic meters of gas to Turkey and imported 4.5 billion cubic meters of gas from Turkmenistan in 2012, according to the BP.
Ghavampour underlined that the Iranian administration can not rely on short-term gas export revenues.
"I don't think that the gas export revenues to become a reliable income source for the government in the next 2-3 years," he said.
The official emphasized that Iran pursue the issue of exporting natural gas to European countries as well as Pakistan and the Arabic states.
Iran exports natural gas to Turkey, Armenia, and Azerbaijan. Almost 90 percent of Iranian exports went to Turkey in 2012, and the remainder went to Azerbaijan and Armenia.
In a report titled "Natural Gas Exports from Iran", EIA estimated that the average revenues from Iran's natural gas exports during the period July 2011 to June 2012 were approximately $10.5 million per day, or about 5 percent of the estimated $231 million per day in revenues from crude oil and condensates exports over the same period.
The country's total gas reserves have been estimated at more than 33.1 trillion cubic meters.
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