ANKARA - Iran resumed its natural gas export to Turkey on Thursday after it was forced to cut supplies due to an explosion on the pipeline at the weekend, the Anatolia news agency reported.
Officials from the Turkish energy ministry told the agency the pipeline linking the northwest Iranian town of Tabriz with Ankara had been repaired, allowing the pumping of gas.
Iran was forced to stop exports after the pipeline was partly damaged by an explosion near the town of Dogubayazit, in Agri province, some 17 kilometers (10 miles) from the Iranian border.
Turkey's state-owned oil and gas company BOTAS did not say at the time what had caused the explosion. But a local official suggested that the likely cause was a "technical malfunction."
The cut in Iranian supplies forced Turkey to increase its import from Russian giant Gazprom by 50 percent.
han/nh
09/13/2007 12:51 GMT