Page 35 - RusRPTAug24

workers from abroad is politically sensitive. And spending cuts leading to increased unemployment and stagnant – or even falling – real incomes – is also something the Kremlin wants to avoid (at least until it can achieve something that can be sold as a military victory in Ukraine).
Via The Bell.
2.11 Iran-Russia gas memo is not a fish, but a fishing rod
The signing of a strategic gas memorandum by Russia and Iran in June is not a fish, but a fishing rod. That is, it does not oblige the signatories to anything, essentially representing a promise to jointly think about the prospects.
On the one hand, in 2023, the country's own production, according to the Statistical Review of World Energy, amounted to 251.7bn cubic meters. This is the third figure in the world after the United States and Russia, with a share of 6.2% of global gas production. In other words, the Islamic Republic is one of the world's three gas leaders. However, domestic consumption in the country is also extremely high - 245.6bn cubic meters (according to this indicator, Iran is in 4th place, behind Russia, the United States, and China). Moreover, the Islamic Republic periodically reports a shortage of blue fuel. So it seems that Russian gas would not be superfluous there.
On the other hand, Iran has the second largest gas reserves in the world (32.1 trillion cubic meters as of 2021), second only to Russia, but surpassing even the Middle Eastern leader and largest player in the LNG market - Qatar. The country plans to significantly increase the production of this energy source. As the Minister of Oil of the Islamic Republic of Iran Javad Ouji stated in the spring of this year, by 2030 production could reach 1.3bn cubic meters per day, which is equivalent to almost 450bn cubic meters per year! There are also great opportunities to improve the gas balance by reducing the loss of valuable raw materials (and they are quite large in Iran) and increasing the energy efficiency of the economy. In other words, the time to start deliveries of Russian gas is, to put it mildly, not very favorable.
Iran can use Russian gas not only for its own needs, but also for resale under swap schemes. The country already supplies blue fuel – albeit in very modest volumes – to neighboring Iraq and Turkey. And the development of its own production coupled with the purchase of Russian raw materials could turn the IRI into a large gas hub.
Transport corridors: The first of them involves the use of the old, Soviet gas transportation system Central Asia - Center, the capacity of which reaches 80 billion cubic meters per year. It can be used to pump blue fuel in transit through Kazakhstan (or Uzbekistan) to Turkmenistan. In turn, Turkmenistan is connected to Iran by two pipelines with a capacity of 20 billion cubic meters per
35 RUSSIA Country Report August 2024 www.intellinews.com