to Turkey—but the pipeline company says it has absolutely no intention of carrying any Iranian gas.
That will foil the sole contract Iran has with a European firm for Iranian natural gas. Iran signed a contract four years ago with a Swiss firm for a huge sale of natural gas. It can only reach the Swiss firm through the Trans-Adriatic Pipeline (TAP), and that door has now been slammed shut.
TAP aims to transport 10 billion cubic meters (bcm) of gas from the Shah Deniz field in Azerbaijan, Michael Hoffmann, director of external affairs and communications for the TAP project, told the Trend news agency Saturday.
Iran’s Fars news agency, however, cited an unnamed Iranian official as saying Iran was just about set to start sending gas to the Swiss. The National Iranian Gas Export Company and Swiss Elektrizitaetsgesellschaft Laufenburg (EGL) signed a 25-year deal in March 2008 for delivering 5.5 billion cubic meters of gas per year. The United States was most displeased.
Iran has repeatedly said the gas is to go through TAP to Switzerland.
Switzerland recently announced that it would not join the new EU sanctions on Iran, allowing Swiss firms to buy Iranian oil and gas. The Swiss have not bought Iranian crude for several years, leaving the gas contract as the one economic interest.
TAP’s current shareholders are EGL (42.5 percent), Norway’s Statoil (42.5 percent) and E.ON Ruhrgas of Germany (15 percent). As an EU member, E.ON cannot do business with Iran and Statoil long ago decided to end all its business with Iran.
Recently, Javad Owji, managing director of the National Iranian Gas Co. (NIGC), said Iran would export gas to Europe via Turkish territory. He said a decision to sell gas to Switzerland’s EGL would require trilateral talks between the three countries involved.
Iran produced 152 billion cubic feet of gas last year and exported above 8 bcm of that to Turkey, the only country to which it exports any serious volume of gas.
