National Iranian Gas Exporting Company has announced that the first contract for exporting Iran's natural gas to Iraq will be signed within the next two months, Press TV reported with reference to the official website of Iran's Oil Ministry Shana.
According to the initial contract Iran's gas will be transited through Ilam border to feed three Iraqi power plants but the final agreement will be inked within two months, the caretaker of the National Iranian Gas Exporting Company, Hossein Bidarmaghz, said on Sunday.
The official stated that based on the agreement with the Iraqi energy ministry, the Islamic Republic of Iran would export 25 million cubic meters of natural gas per day to Iraq in the next year and a half.
Bidarmaghz went on to say that the Iraqi Ministry of Electricity has signed a contract with an Iranian company for the construction of the required gas pipeline in its territory.
Recently, Iran, Iraq, and Syria signed a $10 billion agreement for the transit of Iranian gas from the Islamic Republic's South Pars gas field to Europe via Lebanon and the Mediterranean Sea.
According to the deal, Iranian gas will be transited to European countries, including Greece, via a 5,000-kilometer pipeline passing through Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon and under the Mediterranean Sea. The project will take three to five years to be completed.
Iran sits on the world's second largest natural gas reserves after Russia, and holds almost 16 percent of the world's total reserves.
The Islamic Republic is the second largest oil producer of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC).