“Russia will build a gas pipeline to South Asia instead of Europe”

Alexey Gromov, Principal Director on Energy studies at the Institute for Energy and Finance, and commented to the Novye Izvestia newspaper on the prospects for gas cooperation between Russia and Azerbaijan in the context of Gazprom's new initiatives in the Iranian direction.

The negotiations between Vladimir Putin and Ilham Aliyev in Baku on energy cooperation were closed to the press. But the leaders of Russia and Azerbaijan did not discuss the problem of Ukrainian transit. A month ago, a Gazprom delegation was in Iran, and it was about new pipelines to South Asia.

— Nothing new has become known about the fate of Ukrainian transit or specifics about energy cooperation with Azerbaijan. It turns out that the Russian president visited for nothing?

— It seems to me that another component was rather discussed, which the media does not write about. In particular, I am referring to the fact that I link the discussion of gas cooperation between Russia and Azerbaijan in the context of the visit of the Gazprom delegation to Iran a month ago, where the possibilities of organizing pipeline gas supplies to Iran were discussed with the prospect of entering the markets of South Asia.

— It's much more than that. The fact is that there is a North—South railway transport corridor, which everyone is talking about. If you look at the news at the end of June, a serious Gazprom delegation visited Iran, where a strategic memorandum on pipeline supplies of Russian gas to Iran was signed.

The memorandum assumes that Russia has offered Iran to organize gas supplies from the territory of the Russian Federation to Iran in the amount of up to 110 billion cubic meters per year. In fact, we are talking about creating a system comparable in power to the Nord Streams.

— We are talking about the fact that Russian gas will be supplied along the bottom of the Caspian Sea. Russia is ready to build an underwater gas pipeline. This was the statement of the Iranian minister. Considering that we are talking about volumes of 110 billion cubic meters per year, we can really do this.