Oil Minister Bijan Namdar Zangeneh has dismissed claims that Iran has agreed to revoke penalty against Pakistan for its delays in completing the Iran-Pakistan (IP) gas pipeline project.
“[The news of] new agreements on Iran-Pakistan gas pipeline are not correct,” Zangeneh told the Mehr news agency on Friday.
Zangeneh’s explanations were in reaction to remarks made by some Pakistani officials and reports by some media outlet that had said new accords have been reached between Tehran and Islamabad on the much-delayed gas pipeline.
Last month, some Pakistani officials claimed that Pakistan and Iran have agreed to revoke penalty clause of the IP gas pipeline project as the two countries have decided to complete the project soon after lifting the international sanctions on Iran.
According to Pakistani petroleum ministry officials, during the recent visit of a high-level Iranian delegation, led by Iranian Economy Minister Ali Taiebnia, the two countries agreed on revoking the penalty clause of the agreement for the time being, Business Recorder reported on December 18, 2014.
Also on December 26, the UK based newspaper Financial Times said Pakistan had convinced Iran to step back from demanding $200 million a month from January 1 to compensate for Islamabad's failure to begin receiving gas from Iran's South Pars gas field, according to the country's minister for petroleum.
However, Pakistan's Federal Minister for Petroleum and Natural Resources Shahid Khaqan Abbasi totally rejected statements attributed to him by the Financial Times on Iran-Pakistan gas pipeline.
Iran has built its own section of the gas pipeline stretching from the giant South Pars gas field, but Pakistan has not met its obligations for its own portion of the pipeline. Pakistan is in dire need of Iran's gas to feed its power plants and resolve its load shedding, particularly during summer.
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