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Iran says exporting 3000 MW power to Pakistan possible

Business Materials 22 March 2016 13:11 (UTC +04:00)

Baku, Azerbaijan, March 22

By Emil Ilgar - Trend:

Exporting 3000 megawatts(MW) of power to Pakistan is possible, the Deputy Energy Minister Houshang Falahatian told IRNA on March 22.

Without specifying the details, he said that the delayed debts of Iran's neighbor power clients is about $1.5 billion.

He also said that Pakistan hasn't demonstrated a serious willingness to increase power import from Iran.

According to Iran's Energy Ministry's latest weekly report, the country increased power generation capacity by more than 600 MW in 2015 to about 73,500 MW.

Iran has planned to increase power generation capacity to 100,000 MW by 2021.

Falahatian didn't reveal how much kilowatt-hour (kWh) of Iranian electricity would be exported to Pakistan, however, Pakistan has about 4 percent share in Iran's 10-billion kWh electricity energy export, Iran Energy Ministry's annual report says. Iran's electricity export decreased from about 11.8 billion kWh in 2014 to about 10 billion kWh in 2015. Iraq and Turkey share 90 percent of Iran's total power export.

Falahatian said that Iraq is importing about 300 MW of Iranian power in this season (spring) from Iran, while the power deal between two nations has been expired since the beginning of 2015 and should be extended.

Coming to Pakistan's debts to Iran, The Express Tribune reported on March 10 that Pakistan is already importing 73MW to meet the requirement of Gwadar but payments could not be made since 2011. "Now that sanctions have been removed from Iran, officials believe banking channels will be opened, paving the way for payment of outstanding bills," the report said.

Two months after visiting Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to Tehran in January, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani is preparing to kick off a visit to Islamabad on March 25-26. The schedule of Rouhani's two-day trip was disclosed during a meeting between Pakistani Water and Power Minister Khawaja Muhammad Asif and Iranian Ambassador to Islamabad Mehdi Honardoost on March 9.

During this visit, Pakistan and Iran are set to sign deals for supply of over 3,000 MW of electricity, The Express Tribune reported .

"Three power import deals are expected to be inked by the two countries including supply of 100MW, 75MW and 1,000MW. The 1,000MW agreement could be extended to 3,000MW of electricity," a diplomatic source told The Express Tribune.

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