Confirmation of the restart of gas flow was not available yesterday before Today’s Zaman went to print. Iran had stopped exporting gas to Turkey following an explosion in eastern Anatolia on July 21 that damaged the pipeline.
“Iran’s gas exports to Turkey will resume on Sunday before noon,” the manager of Iran’s eighth zone of gas transfer operations, Valiollah Dini, told the Fars News Agency (FNA) on Saturday, indicating that flow would resume “at 10:00 [Sunday].”
Turkish officials announced their preparedness to restart operations yesterday.
Turkey had requested the halt of the flow, blaming technical problems, but some reports suggested that part of the Iran-Turkey gas pipeline, which runs through Turkish territory, was blown up. Dini also confirmed the Turkish officials’ announcement that the suspension in the transfer of gas took place due to technical problems. Iran, Turkey’s second largest natural gas provider after Russia, has sent 23 million cubic meters of gas to Turkey daily since March 20.
