Azerbaijan, Baku, July 25 /Trend, corr. D.Khatinoglu/
Iranian National Gas Company has started negotiations with Italian Agip, Spanish Repsol and Russian LukOil's European branch to export its gas to EU, but all talks have failed, EU economic advisor Mehrdad Emadi told Trend.
"Iran's representatives meet with LukOil officials three times 18 month ago and during last meeting Iran proposed to supply its gas to this company on cost price, asking LukOil a 30 percent benefit from gas sale," Emadi said.
EU advisor underlined that Iran's proposal means about a 40 percent discount at gas price for Lukoil, but this company rejected Iran's proposal because of fearing from being affected by the U.S. sanctions.
"Agip, Spanish Repsol also rejected Iran's gas export proposal," he said.
The Iranian semi-official Fars News Agency reported on July 24 that Iran is finalizing negotiations with Greece and Switzerland to export gas. On the other hand, Iranian Oil Minister Rostam Qasemi underlined last week that Iran has several projects to export gas to the west and eastern countries, including the European Union through Turkey, without mentioning the route.
Iran has addressed contrary routes for exporting gas to EU so far. The National Iranian Gas Export Company which was dissolved on July 20, 2012 and Swiss Elektrizitaetsgesellschaft Laufenburg (EGL) signed a 25-year deal in March 2008 to deliver 5.5 billion cubic meters of gas per year.
Iran has repeatedly announced that its gas is planned to be transited through the Trans Adriatic Pipeline (TAP) to Switzerland. However, Michael Hoffmann, director of external affairs and communications at the TAP project told Trend on July 15 that the pipeline does not intend to transport any gas from Iran.
TAP aims to transport 10 bcm of gas from the Shah Deniz Stage II development from Azerbaijan.
Emadi said that Iran's attempts to sign an agreement to deliver its gas through two ports in Malta and Greece to the European Union faced deadlock as well.
According to BP's last annual statistics published in June, Iran produced 138.5 billion cubic meters (bcm) of natural gas in 2011, while its gas consumption was 136.9 bcm during same period. Iran has only 1.6 bcm/y of surplus gas per year. However, Iran says that it is preparing to double gas production by launching new phases of the joint South Pars field. Iran is producing about 240 mcm/d of gas by using 10 of 29 phases at South Pars field each day.
