Page 36 - RusRPTAug24

year. At the same time, Ashgabat is hatching plans to increase its own production by 60 billion cubic meters per year (given that production is currently at the level of 80 billion cubic meters per year) and is looking for opportunities to sell these additional volumes on foreign markets. In other words, even if Turkmenistan agrees to the scheme with the transit of Russian gas, it will have to share, i.e. fill the pipe, ideally in proportions of 50 to 50 with Russian and Turkmen gas. This means that we can talk about annual deliveries to Iran of, at best, 10 billion cubic meters of gas from the Russian Federation.
The second transport corridor looks even more illusory and assumes transit through Azerbaijan. Here, too, it would be necessary to use the Soviet legacy – the Bind-Biand – Astara – Kazi-Magomed pipeline, the capacity of which does not exceed 5-6 billion cubic meters of gas per year. But the fact is that it currently operates in reverse mode – gas from Turkmenistan is pumped through Iran to Azerbaijan. If these supplies are abandoned and the pipeline is turned in the original direction, Baku may not receive the volumes of blue fuel it needs and will “subtract” them from its exports to Turkey (and further to Europe). It is unlikely that this option will be of interest to Azerbaijan.
Pipeline projects: Questions also arise about Iran’s readiness to act as a gas hub, i.e. to supply Russian gas abroad (under swap) or its own volumes obtained as a result of increased production. Yes, Iran is located at the crossroads of the Middle East and occupies a favorable geographical position for organizing supplies, but in practice the necessary infrastructure does not exist and its creation faces a number of obstacles.
The most obvious option is to supply Iranian (and possibly Russian) gas to Pakistan and India. Back in 2009, an agreement was signed on the construction of the onshore gas pipeline “Peace” from Iran to Pakistan and then to India with a total length of 2,700 km and a capacity of 55 billion cubic meters. Iran has already built its section of the pipeline, and Pakistan froze the work in the summer of 2023 “due to force majeure,” or more precisely, under pressure from the United States.
True, in February of this year, the Pakistani Minister of Energy announced the unfreezing of construction and the intention to complete it within a year and a half – in order to avoid paying a penalty in favor of Iran in the amount of $18 billion. However, the United States immediately officially stated that it does not support this project and transparently hinted at the possibility of new sanctions. The fate of the gas pipeline was discussed in April during the visit of Iranian President Ibrahim Raisi to Pakistan, but no breakthrough decisions were apparently made.
The second project is the construction of a 1,200 km long offshore gas pipeline to India; a memorandum on its creation was signed by Gazprom and the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) back in 2017. But the situation here is even worse – in fact, this project has not been mentioned recently.
Another hypothetical option is the construction of a pipeline from Iran to Qatar to further liquefy Iranian gas and supply it to world markets. Qatar has ambitious plans – in February of this year, it announced its intention to increase LNG exports from the current 77 million to 142 million tons per year
36 RUSSIA Country Report August 2024 www.intellinews.com