Turkmenistan may soon raise the price of natural gas it supplies to Iran, said President Niyazov during his inaugural address Friday to the 9th Jubilee Conference of World Turkmen.
"Currently we are supplying to Iran at 75 dollars [per 1000 cubic meters] but we will have to raise the price in near future".
?Friendship is friendship, business is business,? said Niyazov.
Iran buys some eight bullion cubic meters of gas from Turkmenistan annually although the pipe can accommodate up to 13 bcm.
Iran has recently started building a pipe network to connect its own gas fields to the areas that are currently served by Turkmenistan. This may take about three years, during which period Iranian provinces adjacent to Turkmenistan would remain dependent on Turkmen gas.
At the moment Iran is paying considerably less than Gazprom, the largest buyer of gas from Turkmenistan.
