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Iranian Oil Minister Bijan Namdar Zanganeh criticized Turkey’s lack of cooperation on repairmen of the blasted Iran-Turkey natural gas pipeline.
Zanganeh said Turkey did not welcome Iran’s offer to repair a natural gas pipeline inside the country that was damaged by an explosion in March and stopped Tehran’s natural gas flow to the neighboring country.
He added that it was difficult to forecast crude prices amid instabilities over prospects for demand.
Nobody can predict crude prices and now the demand isn’t clear, Zanganeh noted.
Iran’s natural gas exports to Turkey came to a halt following an explosion on a pipeline near the two countries’ shared border, an official at the National Iranian Gas Company (NIGC) said on Tuesday March 31.
The explosion occurred near the Iranian border, causing gas to be halted from 6:50 (0320 GMT) this morning, Mehdi Jamshidi-Dana said.
The cause of the explosion is not known yet, but Kurdish militants who are at war with the Turkish state in the Southeast have blown up the pipeline in the past.
According to Jamshidi-Dana, Turkey’s representative at Bazargan gas transmission station has left his post due to the outbreak of the novel coronavirus.
The official said that all necessary efforts were underway to manage the situation, but that currently it was unclear when the line would re-open.
Experience has shown that repairing the lines takes three to seven days, depending on the amount of damage done, he said.
Turkey’s state news agency Anadolu said the explosion occurred near the Gurbulak border gate with Iran in Agri province.
Turkish broadcaster TRT Haber also said the cause of the explosion was unknown.
The gas flow on the natural gas pipeline was cut and the fire that had started was extinguished by fire squads, it said. The report added that security forces are investigating the incident.
Most recently the line was closed following an attack by Kurdish militants in July 2015, while a subsequent attack on the line in April 2018 was foiled by Turkish security forces.
Iran is Turkey’s second-biggest supplier of natural gas after Russia. Tehran sells about 10 billion cubic meters a year of gas under a 25-year supply deal to Turkey which it uses for electricity generation.
