Tehran, Iran, Nov.29
Trend:
Iran has electricity transactions with its neighbors and by cooperating with Russia and Azerbaijan it can maintain the power consumption, expert on Iran's relations with Russia, Shuaib Bahman told Trend.
"The energy cooperation between Iran and Russia is very diverse and part of it includes nuclear activities, Russia is the most important nuclear partner of Iran and in addition to the Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant, the country has more projects to establish new plants in Iran," he said, referring to Iranian Energy minister's trip to Russia that was aimed to improve energy ties.
"In the current situation, Russia can play a big role as a mediator, to sell Iranian oil to Europe. Of course, there were negotiations on the issue of barter trade with Iran for 500,000 barrels of oil, which could be reinstated," he added.
Iran and Russia have been discussing various ways of increasing bilateral trade, including Moscow possibly taking up to 500,000 barrels a day of Iranian oil in exchange for Russian goods that Iran needs.
"Establishing hydropower plants in the southern coastline of the Persian Gulf has been discussed and it seems that the project is moving forward to operational stage and the number of power plants in the Persian Gulf will increase," Bahman said.
"Power trade can be another area of joint cooperation. In recent years Iran has traded electricity with neighbors specially Russia and Azerbaijan, however the peak demand and electricity consumption level is different in each country," he explained.
"Summer time is the power peak in Iran, while in these two countries, the peak would be winter, thus the process of joining Russia to the Iran - Azerbaijan electricity cooperation, would balance the power consumption in the regional countries," he added.