Baku, Azerbaijan, August 6
Trend:
Iran and Turkmenistan have taken their dispute over gas supplies to international arbitration, the director of National Iranian Gas Company (NIGC) and the deputy minister of oil of the country said.
“The gas dispute is going to arbitration,” Hamid Reza Araki told ISNA news agency on August 6.
He added that Tehran and Ashgabat have agreed to binding arbitration.
The two nations have been locked in the dispute for years, with Central Asia’s Turkmenistan claiming it is owed about $1.8 billion in payments for gas delivered to Iran.
In December 2016, Iran said it had paid off its debt “and the remaining cases have to be reviewed and decided by experts”.
Iran has imported natural gas from Turkmenistan since 1997 for distribution in the north of the country, furthest from the gas resources in the south.