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Iran to Deliver Natural Gas to Turkey by End of July
TEHRAN, July 22 (IslamOnline and News Agencies) - Tehran will start delivering natural gas to Turkey as of July 30, in line with an August 1996 agreement, Iranian deputy oil minister Hamdollah Mohammad-Nejad said, quoted Sunday by the French News Agency AFP.
"We have finished the construction works and everything is ready for a July 30 launch", said Mohammad-Nejad, who is also the head of the National Iranian gas company.
Nejad was quoted by Iranian News Agency IRNA as saying that the construction of 255 kilometers of 40-inch pipeline from Tabriz to Bazargan border point has been finished and the export of gas through the pipeline will begin as of next month.
Speaking to reporters, Nejad said Turkey has laid a 1,490-kilometer pipeline from the Iranian border to Ankara.
"There are four pumping stations to boost gas pressure in the cities of Tabriz, Sarab, Ardebil and Astara and we are now constructing a 48 inch pipeline to enhance our export capacity to Turkey," he said.
Some three billion cubic meters of gas are to be exported to Turkey in the first year (nine million cubic meters per day) which is to be increased to 10 billion cubic meters by the year 2007.
In 1996, Iran and Turkey signed a 20-billion-dollar agreement over 22 years to supply Ankara with 4 billion cubic meters (140 billion cubic feet) of gas per year.
The original contract had set the launch for 1999, but it was delayed for technical reasons.
The Iran/Libya Sanctions Act passed by the U.S. Congress in 1986 calls for sanctions against companies that invest more than 20 million dollars in the Iranian oil industry.
Because of the Turkish argument that the Iranian side was not ready yet, the project will start in the middle of August, senior energy bureaucrats told Turkish Daily News.
The Iranian Libya Sanctions Act (ILSA), which is under debate at the U.S. Congress, is to be renewed on August 1st. ILSA was first started to be applied on August 1996. The U.S. administration is for a two-year extension of ILSA.
U.S. officials commented that the Turkish-Iranian gas deal is not being evaluated within the framework of ILSA in terms of the natural gas sale to Turkey, said the Turkish Daily News.
Iran has the world's second largest natural gas reserves with an estimated 20,000 billion cubic meters (700,000 billion cubic feet).
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