The National Iranian Gas Export Company (NIGEC) last week told the Tehran Times that the problem was primarily technical and denied rumors that the EGL company had decided not to buy any gas from Iran.
The Iran Times emailed EGL and sought its comment. It has not responded.
Part of the problem is indeed technical. There is no gas pipeline through which Iran can deliver the gas. A pipeline was supposed to have been built to link Turkey with Greece and then another one under the Adriatic would to link Greece to Italy.
EGL was going to accept the gas in Italy and deliver it to customers in Italy and Switzerland.
But there is no pipeline yet.
Beyond that, the European Union decided a few years ago not to buy any natural gas from Iran until the nuclear issue was resolved. That would eliminate EGL Italian customers. (Italy is a member of the EU; Switzerland is not.)
The United States was also furiuous at EGL for signing the contract with Iran—with Switzerland’s foreign minister sitting in and giving her imprimatur to the project. The Swiss government dismissed the US concerns. But a growing body of Swiss public opinion has been unhappy at Swiss links to Iran, while the rest of Europe is reducing economic links.
The last public statement from EGL that appears on its website was made in March 2008, a full 3 1/2 years ago. That said EGL and NIGEC had just signed the final agreement allowing gas deliveries to start in 2009 with deliveries eventually rising to 5.5 billion cubic meters a year and continuing for 25 years.
The Trans Adriatic Pipeline website says construction has not yet begun. It says it source for gas when completed will be the Shah Deniz field owned by Azerbaijan in the Caspian Sea. It says nothing about any Iranian gas.
