UPDATED ON:
Tuesday, January 01, 2008
19:53 Mecca time, 16:53 GMT
News Middle East
Iran struggles to meet gas demand

 Mottaki, Iran's foreign minister, said the cold and gas shortages have created problems

Iran has cut gas exports to Turkey after high domestic consumption and a halt in supplies from Turkmenistan.
 
About a dozen Iranian towns and cities have been left without gas in freezing weather, an Iranian news agency reports on Tuesday.
Heavy snowfalls and temperatures in Iran's north plummeting to -10C have increased demand.
 
"After the sharp falls in temperature over the last days and the halt in deliveries by Turkmenistan, exports of gas to Turkey have been cut to a minimum," an Iranian source told the Fars news agency.
The source said the volume of gas exports to Turkey had been cut from 20 million cubic meters to five million cubic meters.
 
Iran was previously forced to completely halt its gas exports to Turkey for five days in January 2007 in order to compensate for a domestic consumption crunch.
 
"The cold and the drop in gas pressure have created problems throughout the country," Manouchehr Mottaki, the foreign minister told state television.
 
Officials cite technical problems for the complete halt in gas supplies from Turkmenistan which normally provides five per cent of Iran's consumption needs.
 
Turkmenistan’s promise
 
Rashid Meredov, Turkmenistan’s foreign minister promised Iran that supplies would be rapidly restored but did not specify when.
 
Iran, which is keen to supply gas to India and Pakistan as well as Europe, has struggled to meet its own demand despite having the second largest gas reserves in the world after Russia.
 
Iran says it needs its nuclear programme solely to provide additional energy for its population of 70 million and strongly rejects accusations that it is seeking an atomic weapons capability.
 
In August, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president, sacked Kazem Vaziri Hamaneh, the former oil minister who warned Iran faces a "catastrophe" in its energy sector if a solution is not found for high consumption in the next 15 years.
 
Development of Iranian gas fields is held up by a lack of foreign investment, although Tehran last week signed a $6 billion development deal with Malaysia.
 Source: Agencies
 
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