Azernews.Az

By Aynur Jafarova

The aim of Iran in importing Turkmenistan's gas is to broaden the cooperation between the two countries, Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Seyed Abbas Araqchi told Azerbaijan's Trend news agency Saturday.

Araqchi said Iran itself exports gas to numerous countries, noting that it has the world's second largest gas reserves.

He said Iran imports Turkmen gas not to meet domestic demand, but carries out its export and transit. According to Araqchi, Iran imports gas from Turkmenistan to develop its economic relations with the Central Asian state.

"There were some problems regarding this issue, sometimes weather conditions affected the amount of imported gas," the Iranian official said.

"Sometimes there were problems in financial transactions because of the sanctions imposed on Iran by the Western states. However, these problems were temporary and were always solved," Araqchi noted.

Turkmenistan earlier promised to resume gas exports to Iran. As part of the barter trade, Iran is obliged to send oil industry equipment to Turkmenistan, which in turn is to export gas to its neighbor.

Iran and Turkmenistan have common land borders and are neighboring countries on the Caspian Sea. They have maintained relations since Turkmenistan's independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. Iran was the first nation to recognize Turkmenistan as an independent nation. Since then, the two countries have enjoyed good relations and have cooperated in economics, the infrastructure and energy sectors.

Tehran has the largest volume of trade turnover with Turkmenistan after Russia. The two countries' annual trade currently amounts to $4.2 billion. It is planned to increase this figure to $10 billion over five years.

Turkmenistan mainly exports to Iran natural gas, oil and petrochemical products, as well as textiles.