Iran-Armenia Natural Gas Pipeline

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The Iran-Armenia Gas Pipeline is a 140 km pipeline from Iran to Armenia. The 100 km Iranian section runs from Tabriz to the Iran-Armenia border. The Armenian section runs from the Meghri region to Sardarian, and another 197 km of pipeline is planned to reach the center of the country, where it will link up with the existing distribution network. The pipeline diameter is 700 mm and it cost about 220 million USD. The initial capacity of pipeline is 1.1 bcm of natural gas annually, which will be increased up to 2.3 bcm by 2019. The contract was signed for 20 years. For each cubic meter of the Iranian gas, Armenia is supposed to return 3 kwh of electric energy to Iran. The pipeline started operation on 20 December 2006, and was officially inaugurated by the Presidents Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran and Robert Kocharyan of Armenia on 19 March 2007. There are discussions to build a second pipeline from Iran to Armenia.

Many suspect that the pipeline's diameter was reduced from 1,420 mm to 700 mm under pressure from Gazprom, which purchased a majority share in the Armenian section of the pipeline through its subsidiary, Armrosgazprom. If the pipeline had been built at the initial diameter, it would have allowed Iran to export to markets in Europe, thereby competing with Russia's own natural gas industry.^[1]