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Eurasia
June 15, 2018 www.intellinews.com I Page 20
ters in May that first commercial deliveries of gas to Turkey would begin on June 30. He added that gas volumes would be supplied to Turkey gradually, starting with 2 bcm a year, rising to 6 bcm by June 2021. Capacity could be boosted to 31 bcm by 2026, Rustamov also noted.
TANAP’s shareholders are Azerbaijani state energy company Socar (51%), Turkey’s Botas (30%), BP (12%) and Socar Turkey (7%).
In the longer run, TANAP could conceivably trans- port additional volumes of gas from Iran, Iraq, Turkmenistan and Russia.
Iran’s rial languishes with no sign of credible nuclear deal rescue from Europe
bne IntelliNews
The collapsed Iranian rial (IRR) dropped to IRR71,000 to the dollar towards the end of black market trading on June 12, following a weakening of more than 5% over the past week.
Confidence in the currency is unlikely to start flowing back while the major European powers fail to announce any credible measures that might offer more than questionable life rafts for Iran’s economy following early May’s unilateral US with- drawal from the nuclear deal and the announce- ment from Washington that it will be imposing
the “strongest sanctions in history” on Tehran. It is not just US investors that are withdrawing from business relationships with the Iranians. Each day brings more news of European bank and com- panies winding down operations related to Iran,
TANAP extends across 20 provinces of Turkey, with 19 km running under the Sea of Marmara.
Partners in the TANAP project received $3.75bn in loans from international finance institutions, including the World Bank, the European Bank of Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB). The European Union provided a grant of $10.2mn.
Around 80% of the pipes used in the project were purchased from Turkish suppliers, while 20% were imported from China.
As the nuclear deal unravels, Iranians are losing faith that the end of the severe devaluation of their currency is anywhere in sight.
while there has also been a spate of expected Indian oil industry withdrawals appearing on the horizon.
Banned but reliable forex website Bonbast.com, meanwhile, on June 11 was listing the euro and the pound sterling at 81,200 and 92,220, respec- tively, against the IRR. Those rates are not as punishing towards the rial as they were after Iran’s Nowruz Persian New Year break concluded in mid-March, but they are nevertheless another shock to the Iranian economy.
Local sovereign gold coins the Imami and Ba- har Azadi, meanwhile, rose to IRR24.8mn and IRR23.3mn, up more than 4% over the past week. As the date of Donald Trump’s attempt at de-