Baku, Azerbaijan, Jan. 28
By Dalga Khatinoglu – Trend:
Iran’s export gas price plunged from $450 per thousand cubic meters in 1H2014 to about $250 currently, Iran’s Energy Minister Hamid Chitchian said, Mehr news agency reported.
Iran exports about 27 mcm/d of gas to Turkey, swaps gas with Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan and barters gas with Armenia for power.
Chitchian said that despite the plunging of oil and gas price during the last several years, Iran’s electricity export price only decreased from $120 to $100 per thousand kilowatts hours (kWh).
Therefore, Iran’s gas export price decreased by 44 percent, while the electricity export price decreased by 20 percent.
According to the latest statistics of Iran's Energy Ministry, the country exported about 6.081 billion kWh during 10 months of the current fiscal year (started on March 21), which is about 27 percent less than the same period last fiscal year.
Iran’s electricity export has decreased since 2012 significantly. The figure four years ago was about 11.774 billion kWh. The figure for the last fiscal year was about 10.239 billion kWh.
Iran has stopped power export to Iraq in early January due to the reportedly delayed $1.2 billion worth of debts. Iran also cut electricity export to Turkey in June 2016 due to the reportedly delayed $200 million debts.
Turkey and Iraq with 17.6 percent and 69.1 percent share in Iran’s total power exports, were the country’s major power clients during the last fiscal year.
Turkey stopped importing electricity from Iran in June-November 2016, while its cumulative power import from its eastern neighbour stood at 545 million kilowatt hours (kWh) within five months of year.
Regarding continuance of power export to Turkey and Iraq, it seems Iran’s electricity exports would experience about 40 percent decline year-on-year during the current fiscal year.