The Iranian government wants to supply more than 50% of the natural gas to be shipped to Europe through the European Union-backed Nabucco pipeline, Iran's Deputy Oil Minister Azizollah Ramezani said Friday.
The Nabucco Gas Pipeline International GmbH pipeline project aims to curb Europe's reliance on Russian gas supplied through Ukraine - a route that has seen chronic interruptions due to payment disputes between Russia and Ukraine.
The E.U. is also looking to Central Asian states, including gas-rich Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan, to cooperate in supplying Nabucco.
But Ramezani said those nations won't be able to supply enough gas to meet Nabucco's capacity, which is expected to be around 30 billion cubic meters annually.
"Other countries in the region are not able to supply this amount of gas," he said on the sidelines of the World Gas Conference in Buenos Aires. "We hope Nabucco shareholders realize this. We hope we can get more than a 50% share in supplying natural gas to Nabucco."
The Islamic Republic of Iran is in the midst of an aggressive expansion of its natural gas production, said Ramezani, who is also head of the National Iranian Gas Co., or NIGC.
"We have a huge project for expanding natural gas to be the main source of energy inside the country and part for export," Ramezani said.
Ramezani said the country's goal was to reach output of one billion cubic meters a day by 2014. Currently, Iran produces about 600 million cubic meters daily.