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News ID: 5776
Publish Date : 30 September 2014 - 21:47

Gas Imports From Turkmenistan to Rise

TEHRAN/TOKYO (Dispatches) -- Iran will increase imports of natural gas from Turkmenistan starting next week, the director of the National Iranian Gas Company (NIGC) said on Tuesday, according to Iran oil ministry news agency Shana.
Iran has huge gas reserves and exports small quantities to Turkey. But it also relies on imports from Turkmenistan, especially in winter, and has to burn a lot of oil due to slow progress in developing Iranian gas fields.
"Iran has a long-term contract with Turkmenistan, based on which the volume of gas exports increases,” Shana cited Hamid-Reza Araqi as saying.
"Turkmenistan will increase its gas exports to Iran as of next week, and today gas exports to Iran have soared to 12 million cubic meters,” he said.
Iran sits on the world’s largest reserves of gas but has faced serious gas shortages because of slow progress in raising output from its giant South Pars field.
Western sanctions aimed at stopping Iran’s nuclear program have hindered gas production growth, while the United States has pressured potential buyers to find other suppliers.
Araqi did not say how much more gas was expected to flow from Turkmenistan, which started production from the world’s second-biggest gas field last year.
In 2012, more than 90% of Iran’s imports came from Turkmenistan and the rest from Azerbaijan, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
Between July 2011 and June 2012, Iran’s imports from both countries have averaged just over 1 billion cubic feet (Bcf) per day, the EIA said.
Any rise in the supply of Turkmen gas to northern Iran should help limit the impact of Iran’s voracious winter fuel appetite on its own gas exports to Turkey, which also relies on gas for winter warmth.
Turkmenistan holds the world’s fourth-largest natural gas reserves.
Oil Exports to Asia Lower
Asian buyers imported less than 1 million barrels per day of Iranian crude for the first time this year in August as China’s buys hit the lowest since the easing of Western sanctions, although intake was still up 6.4% from a year ago.
Iran’s biggest buyers - China, India, Japan and South Korea - together in August took in 921,064 bpd of the Islamic Republic’s crude, down 10.5% from a seven-month low hit in July and the lowest since last October, government and tanker-tracking data showed.
For the first eight months of 2014, the four buyers’ imports averaged 1.15 million bpd, up 23.6% from the same period last year.
Top buyer China’s imports from Tehran for the January-August period were at 578,630 bpd, up 37% on year.
China and India together have accounted for this year’s strong Asian intake, offsetting lower year-to-date imports by South Korea and Japan.
For August, China’s imports from Iran fell 28.6% to 311,653 bpd, its lowest level in 10 months and marking the first year-on-year decline in eight months as at least one regular buyer went through a planned overhaul.
"With regards to China, politics is not seen as a factor behind the decline. Its imports will return to the robust levels of earlier this year once maintenance is over,” Ken Hasegawa, a commodity sales manager at Newedge Japan, said.
Surging imports from India and South Korea in August compared with a year ago helped to offset the China drop.
India’s imports in August jumped 81.2% from last year to 273,500 bpd, and over January-August, India’s imports rose 49.5% to 271,000 bpd.
South Korea’s imports from Iran last month more than doubled from a year ago to 134,419 bpd, while its shipments for the January-August period were down eight percent from last year to 127,944 bpd.
Shipments to Japan - the last of the four to report its oil intake - fell by 6.2% to 201,492 bpd last month, trade ministry data showed on Tuesday. For the year through August, Japan’s imports fell 9.2% from a year ago to 170,518 bpd.