TBILISI (Combined Sources) — Armenia and neighboring Iran have struck a deal to construct a $240 million oil pipeline connecting the two countries, the Xinhua News Agency reported, citing Armenian and Iranian news reports.
Iranian Oil Minister Massoud Mirkazemi announced the news to reporters on the sidelines of a meeting in Tehran Saturday with visiting Armenian Energy and Natural Resources Minister Armen Movsisian, the Tehran Times reported.
Local Armenian media, meanwhile, reported that the deal had been reached during a recent trip to Iran by Armenian Energy Minister Armen Movsisyan, who met his Iranian counterpart Massoud Mirkazemi in Tehran.
The Armenian reports quoted Iranian Oil Minister Massoud Mirkazemi as saying that the agreed oil pipeline will start from Iran’s northwestern town of Tabriz and run into Armenia to assist the country with its petro-chemical product needs.
The Iranian official said that the volume and value of the oil to be delivered to Armenia through the pipeline would be finalized in the near future.
There is already a natural gas pipeline between Iran and Armenia, which receives some of its gas supplies from Iran. The land-locked South Caucasus country, however, relies mainly on Russian natural gas that reaches Armenia also through pipeline traversing Georgia.
Iran and Armenia have in recent years expanded cooperation in different fields, particularly through swapping electricity for natural gas. Iran mainly exports natural gas to Armenia and imports power supplies from the Caucasian state through two transfer lines with a total power transfer capacity of 220kw/ph at present.
In October, the two sides agreed to form a joint working group to explore expanding cooperation in water and renewable energy resources. The agreement was made at a meeting between Iranian Minister of Energy Majid Namjou and his Armenian counterpart in Tehran.
Meanwhile, Iran’s Minister of Culture and Islamic Guidance Mohammad Hosseini was in Armenia on Monday, where he spoke a group of Armenian authors and intellectuals about expanding cultural ties between the two countries.
He expressed hope that the Armenian poets he was speaking to would attend an upcoming international conference in Iran about the Islamic republic’s historic role in world poetry.
“During recent years, a group of Iranian playwrights as well as young Iranian authors visited Armenia. We decided to published precious Iranian works in Armenian and on the other hand render Armenian works into Persian and release them in Iran,” he said.
