Energy Security and the Role of Iran
Logistics, not politics, should determine pipeline routes, according to Dr. Hossein Esmaeili, the general director of Europe, America and Caspian Sea Neighboring Countries at the Ministry of Petroleum of the Islamic Republic of Iran.
In a speech on energy security and the role of Iran and Georgia at the recent 12th Georgian International Oil, Gas, Infrastructure and Energy Conference in Tbilisi, Georgia, Esmaeili tried to separate politics and energy, and boil the problem of how to move millions of dollars of energy into the simple mathematics of cost and demand.
“Europe is searching for secure and diversified energy sources, while from the standpoint of a producer; Iran is striving to gain access to secure energy markets and reliable technologies,” he said.
“On Caspian oil and natural gas export pipeline, I should stress that commercial realities would determine routes in the final analysis. Thus routes which have been promote by politics, have failed to materialize in the past. High cost pipelines are not viable unless there is committed out put and markets with those capital outlays.”
Iran is open to working with European investors in developing pipelines, Esmaeili said.
He added that Iran is looking for investors to help develop its own sizable gas resources.
“In Iran, energy is mostly consumed in the north, while oil and natural gas fields are located in the south. Our plan to facilitate Caspian energy exports is based on this fact,” he said.
“We are in position to receive process and use crude oil in Tehran and Tabriz refineries by a pipeline from Neka to Tehran. This phase is crude oil swap by help of the Tehran and Tabriz refineries.”
The Neka-Tehran pipeline is just one of several new routes Iran is interested in developing: Esmaeili said additional potential projects include a pipeline from Neka on the Caspian coast to Jask on the Coast of Oman Sea.
A third potential investment project, Esmaeili said, is to construct “a major direct gas pipeline from Sarakhs at the north of Iran to Jask on the Coast of Oman Sea.”
“Iran is actively engaged in many pipeline plans destined to Europe crossing multiple borders,” he said, noting that Iran is a “unique transit gateway” for bringing Caspian gas to Europe.
“Iran can connect regions' gas to the Turkey corridor. Iran is intended to have an active role in realization of Nabucco mega pipeline project. The Nabucco gas pipeline project (Iran-Turkey-Bulgaria-Romania-Hungary and Austria), once completed, would be a deciding step which could help to realization of the European goal of diversified and multiple gas supplies,” Esmaeili said. “It can bridge Caspian Sea-Central Asia and the Middle East land locked gas reserves to Europe.”
Iran, he noted, can help bring peace and prosperity to the region.
“Helping countries to achieve happiness, prosperity and independence will insure the national interest of Iran,” he said.
“Iran, resource based, geopolitically and geographically, does have the potential and could play a significant role to ease world's and specially Europe's concerns and needs to sustainable and diversified supplies of oil and gas.”