Iraq to let Iran's export gas to cross to Syria

Iraq will let Iran's natural gas pipeline to cross its territories to Syria and the Mediterranean regions, the Iraqi Oil Ministry said in a statement on Thursday.

"We are willing to let the Iranian gas pipeline to cross to Syria via the Iraqi territories," the statement quoted Oil Minister Hussein al-Shahristani as saying after a meeting Wednesday with an Iranian delegation in Baghdad.

"The two sides will form joint committee to study the route of the pipeline in Iraq," Shahristani said.

Iraq can use part of the Iranian gas to feed its electrical power plants until the country can depend on its own gas produced from the Iraqi gas fields.

Iraq has proven reserves of 112 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, but because of the poor infrastructure of the oil and gas industries, the country is only producing 1.5 billion cubic feet a day.

Iran has the world's second largest gas reserves after Russia, and it is one of the few countries capable of supplying much larger amounts of natural gas in the future.

Source: Xinhua