ANKARA - Turkey and Iran have reached a preliminary agreement to carry natural gas from Iran and Turkmenistan to Europe, Turkish Energy Minister Hilmi Guler said Sunday.
The memorandum of understanding was signed away from public eye Friday evening in Ankara after talks between Guler and Iranian Oil Minister Kazem Vaziri Hamaneh.
"We discussed some requests from Iran in return to their demand to export natural gas to European Union countries (via Turkey)... As a result, we agreed on carrying Turkmen gas via Iran to Turkey and then to Europe," Guler said in the northeastern city of Ordu, Anatolia news agency reported.
Iran also agreed to let Turkey develop several natural gas fields in Iran, he said, without elaborating.
Officials from the two countries need to complete technical work for the agreement to be finalised, he added.
The deal is seen as boosting the prospects of a planned 3,300-kilometre (2,000-mile) pipeline project, known as Nabucco, to carry gas from the Middle East and Central Asia to the European Union via Turkey and the Balkans, bypassing Russia.
Turkey already buys gas via a conduit from the northwestern Iranian city of Tabriz to Ankara, which was inaugurated in December 2001 even though the deal was frowned upon in the United States, Turkey's long-standing NATO ally and Iran's arch-foe.
07/15/2007 10:39 GMT