TEHRAN: Iran has signed a $1.3 billion deal with a Turkish firm to build a pipeline for gas exports of 60 million cubic meters (2.1 billion cubic feet) a day in three years, press reports said on Saturday.
"The contract to build a gas pipeline stretching 660 kilometers (410 miles) and worth one € 1 billion was signed in the presence of Iranian and Turkish energy and oil ministers," the Arman newspaper, said quoting an oil ministry statement.
Deputy Oil Minister Javad Ouji, who is also the director of the state-owned National Iranian Gas Company, signed the deal with Turkey’s privately owned ASB group, the paper said.
"With the construction of the new pipeline, our country will be able to export 50 to 60 million cubic meters of gas a day to this country (Turkey) and Europe in three years," it quoted Ouji as saying.
Turkey already receives between 15 and 18 million cubic meters (between 525 and 630 million cubic feet) of gas a day through an existing pipeline which runs from the northwestern Iranian city of Tabriz to Ankara.
The new pipeline deal comes as the European Union is poised to follow the United States in imposing unilateral sanctions against Iran’s oil and gas industry that go well beyond a fourth set of UN sanctions which the Security Council approved in June.
