June 20, 2025
US sanctions have killed an announced plan to send Turkmenistan’s natural gas to Iraq across the Islamic Republic.
a distribution center near Basra in Iraq.
Iraqi Ministry of Electricity spokesman Ahmad Musa said June 1 that US sanctions on Iran mean Baghdad cannot pay Iran the transit fees to move gas from Turkmenistan through Iranian pipelines.
Musa told the Iraqi News Agency (INA) the restrictions have caused Iraq to lose nearly 5 gigawatts (GW) of electricity generation capacity for this summer, which he said was meant to reach 27 GW.
Under a gas swap contract signed last year between Iran, Iraq and Turkmenistan, the Arab country was supposed to receive up to 20 million cubic meters (mcm) per day of gas via Iranian pipelines.
Iran has been supplying up to 50 mcm of natural gas and 1 GW of electricity to Iraq every day. The United States announced in early March that it had revoked a waiver from its Iran sanctions that allowed Iraq to pay for electricity imports from Iran, but still allowed the much larger imports of Iranian natural gas to continue for the moment.
Iraq relies on Iranian gas for 43 percent of its electricity generation. Direct electricity imports from Iran accounted for up to 10 percent of Iraq’s domestic supply of power.
The US has for two decades been pushing Baghdad to develop its own natural gas deposits to generate electricity, but Iraq has done very little on that front.