Gazprom’s Headquarters has hosted today a working meeting between Alexey Miller, Chairman of Gazprom’s Management Committee and Gholamreza Ansari, Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the Islamic Republic of Iran to Russia.

The parties addressed matters of bilateral cooperation in the oil & gas sector, placing a focus on potential interaction in Iranian gas exports to third countries as well as Gazprom’s participation in projects aimed at creating Iranian gas export flows through involvement in the entire gas value chain, from upstream to retail.

In that regard, Gazprom’s participation in the Iran – Pakistan - India pipeline project and in one or two phases of the South Pars field project with subsequent hydrocarbon exports have been highlighted as the top priority joint businesses.

Additionally, the parties reviewed ways of jointly engineering and constructing underground storage networks for liquid and gaseous hydrocarbons as well as promoting staff training and exchange activities.

The parties confirmed their interest in further developing the mutually beneficial long-term cooperation between Gazprom and Iran in the energy sector.

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Iran’s proved natural gas reserves average 28 tcm. Domestic gas production is on an annual 10% rise and, as of year-end 2004, exceeded 140 bcm. Almost all the gas is being used on the domestic market: 100 bcm is supplied to commercial customers (including 35 bcm to power plants) and about 40 bcm is injected into oil reservoirs to maintain well flow rates. The length of Iranian gas mains is in excess of 22000 km.

The only gas production firm in Iran is National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) supplying all the extracted gas to National Iranian Gas Company (NIGC). NIGC’s businesses include all the operations with gas after its production: treatment, transmission, processing and marketing. The company owns eight gas separation plants with over 380 MMcm/d in overall capacity.