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Iran eyes LNG export boost

Rome, December 5, 2007

Iran sits on nearly one fifth of the world's gas and wants to export 30 per cent of it within six years to make up for decades of under investment which have left one of the planet's largest reserves largely untapped, a senior Iranian gas executive said.

'We are going to export around 500 million cubic metres a day, a major part of that is in liquefied natural gas form,' Nosratollah Sayfi, the managing director of the gas export arm of the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC), said on the sidelines of an LNG summit in Rome.

'Our programme at this moment is to produce 77 million tonnes a year by 2014.'

But one LNG consultant said Iran, which does not produce any LNG now, would not get close to that target within a decade.

He said Qatar, the world's largest exporter of LNG, took nearly two decades to build much less liquefaction capacity than Iran says it can get going in just six.

Iran does not have enough money or experience to do it alone and big western oil and gas firms that do will be wary of investing in a country increasingly isolated from the west, the consultant said.

Although Washington said on Monday Iran does not appear to have pursued a nuclear weapons programme since 2003, it still fears Tehran may revive it.

Iran insists its nuclear power programme is only aimed at making electricity so that it can burn less gas in power stations and therefore export more of the fuel that it has vast reserves of but has been unable to profit from so far.

'Next to Russia the Islamic Republic of Iran enjoys nearly 17 per cent of the world's natural as reserves and stands in second place in the world,' Sayfi told the conference. Reuters




Tags: Iran | LNG | NIOC |

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