The Iraqi electricity ministry signed Thursday a contract
worth $365 million with an Iranian company nominated by the Tehran government
to build a gas pipeline to supply Iraqi power plants with Iranian gas, the
ministry spokesman said Thursday.
Musaab Al Mudaris said the pipeline would carry some 25 million cubic feet of
Iranian gas a day that would be enough to generate some 2,500 megawatts.
The pipeline will pass through Iraq's Mansouriyah gas field, near the Iranian
border in the restive Diyala province and will feed three power plants; one in
Sadr City in northern Baghdad and the other two in the northern and southern
outskirts of the capital.
An Iraqi government spokesman Ali Al Dabbagh, meantime, said that the cabinet
has agreed to pay 25% of the value of the contract to the Iranian company. The
pipeline will be 130
kilometers long and 48 inches in diameter.
Iraq's aging power stations generate less than half the country's actual
demand. The situation is particularly acute in the searingly hot Iraqi summers
when the country's national grid can only provide a few hours of power each
day.
The contract also illustrates the closer ties that have developed
between Iran
and Iraq under the Shiite-led government of Prime Minister Nouri
al-Maliki.
Iraq and Iran
fought a fierce war in the 1980s in which nearly 1 million people were
killed. Many
of Iraq's Shiite leaders that were persecuted by Saddam Hussein's regime
sought
asylum in Iran.
They have since returned after the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003 and
some now
hold key government posts and maintain close ties with Iran.
Iraq is trying to produce its own gas when it signed earlier this month deals
with Turkish Petroleum International Co. or TPAO, Korea Gas Corp., known as
Kogas, and Kuwait Energy Company to develop the Mansouriyah oil field and with
Kuwait Energy and TPAO to develop the Siba gas field in southern Iraq. Baghdad
initialed this month a deal with Kogas to develop Iraq's largest gas field
Akkas in the western Anbar province.