Baku, Azerbaijan, Nov. 7
By Khalid Kazimov – Trend:
The amount of Iran’s gas exports to its western neighbor, Iraq, has reached 12 million cubic meters (mcm) per day and the figure is expected to hit 40 mcm within the coming months.
The Iranian deputy oil minister, Hamidreza Araqi, has forecasted that Iran would launch supplying its gas to Iraqi port city of Basra by March, IRNA news agency reported.
The official described the plans for supplying Iran’s gas to Iraqi capital of Baghdad and also Basra as the Islamic Republic’s most significant plans for exporting gas.
He further added that the obstacles to banking transactions regarding the current projects have been removed and Iran currently faces no difficulty in receiving payments from Iraq.
Saying that Iran has already laid a part of Basra gas pipeline on its own soil, he added that Iraq is expected to complete the construction of its part within the next three months.
Iran plans to boost its capacity for annual exports of gas to 80 billion cubic meters by 2021. The Iranian plan has also envisaged exporting 50 billion cubic meters of the total amount to its neighbors.
So far, Turkey has been known as the largest customer of Iran’s gas as its daily imports of gas from the Islamic Republic stands at 30 million cubic meters.
Iran has extended its gas pipeline to Iraqi capital of Baghdad and with the inauguration of the second pipeline to Basra Iraq’s imports of gas from Iran will amount to 40 million cubic meters per day.