By OGJ editors
HOUSTON, Sept. 14 -- In a visit to the Armenian capital of Yerevan, Iran's parliamentary speaker Gholam-Ali Hadad-Adel said his country wants to build a second natural gas pipeline to Armenia, according to the news service AFP.com.
This would augment a $220 million pipeline now in the last stages of completion and due to start up in January to delivery about 36 billion cu m over a 20-year contract.
Earlier in 2006, Armenia maintained that the 140-km pipeline was being built with an OD of 48 in., despite Russian pressure to reduce its OD to 28 in. The pipeline covers 100 km in Iran, with the balance traversing Armenia.
Until now Armenia has depended solely on Russian gas rather than importing hydrocarbons from closer Azerbaijan. That trade is prevented, said the news service, by the long-standing dispute between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the Armenian Nagorno-Karabakh enclave in Azerbaijan.
The report said Armenia will compensate Iran in part for the costs of the first pipeline with deliveries of electricity from a Soviet-era nuclear power plant.
