Business | Oil & Gas
Iran to ink gas deal with Pakistan in April
Iran will sign a final agreement to export gas via pipeline to Pakistan in April, an official from the National Iranian Gas Co. said.
- Bloomberg
- Published: 23:41 March 11, 2008
Singapore: Iran will sign a final agreement to export gas via pipeline to Pakistan in April, an official from the National Iranian Gas Co. said.
Iran has completed half of the pipeline, which will have a capacity to carry 110 million cubic metres of gas a day to Pakistan, Vahid Zeydifard, a senior pipe-lines expert at the National Iranian Gas, said in an interview at the Gastech conference in Bangkok yesterday. Iran plans to start exporting gas to Pakistan from 2011.
The $7.4 billion project, known as the "Peace Pipe-line", will carry gas from Iran to Pakistan and India to meet the growing energy demand of the two countries. The US, seeking to isolate Iran because of its pursuit of a nuclear programme, wants India and Pakistan to pull out of the project.
"Negotiations are at a final stage," Zeydifard said. "Pakistan needs 50 million cubic metres of gas a day, and we can supply the rest to India if they want it." India currently uses about 108 million cubic metres of gas a day, according to BP Statistical Review of World Energy June 2007.
Iran is unable to commission gas export projects either via pipeline or in liquefied form because US sanctions are preventing international lenders and investors from releasing funds, Zeydifard said. Pakistan is facing a shortage of gas as domestic fields decline and may have to depend on Iranian fuel to meet demand, which is expanding by five per cent a year.
The US sanctions and coming presidential elections in America make it difficult to take a final investment decisions on gas projects in Iran, Yves Cerf-Mayer, vice-president of LNG Marketing North East Asia at Total SA, said at the Bangkok conference. Total has delayed a decision to invest in the South Pars LNG project in Iran.
The National Iranian Oil Co. is developing the Kish field, which will transport gas via a 900-kilometre pipeline from Assaluyeh to Iranshar once it is completed.
Agreement: Refinery in INdonesia
Iran signed an agreement yesterday on setting up a planned 300,000 barrels per day oil refinery joint venture in Indonesia, together with a Malaysian partner, Iranian officials said.
Iran and Indonesia also reached initial agreement on a 360,000 bpd plant to refine gas liquids in Iran's Gulf port of Bandar Abbas and an urea plant with a capacity of one million tonnes per year in southern Iran.
Iranian Oil Minister Gholamhossein Nozari told Reuters the refinery would be 40 per cent owned by Iran, 40 per cent by Indonesia and 20 per cent by the Malaysian partner.
- Reuters
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