Officials of Iran and Azerbaijan signed a memorandum of understanding, under which they agreed to double the swap supplies of natural gas under the Turkmenistan-Iran-Azerbaijan scheme, IRNA reports.

Swap deliveries imply that Turkmenistan supplies gas to Iran, after which Iran exports a similar amount of natural gas to Azerbaijan. Part of the transit gas remains with Iran as payment for the swap.

The Memorandum of Understanding was signed by Iranian Oil Minister Javad Oji and Azerbaijani Economy Minister Mikail Jabbarov at Baku Energy Week on Friday.

For five months of this year, Azerbaijan imported about 1.5 billion cubic meters of natural gas under the agreement on swap supplies of Turkmen gas through Iran. With such a volume of blue fuel, the parties exchange during the year, but as practice has shown, the demand and technical capabilities for swap deliveries turned out to be higher than expected.

Earlier, the Iranian Oil Minister stated that there are prerequisites for an increase in swap gas under the Turkmenistan-Iran-Azerbaijan scheme is up to 15 billion cubic meters per year, which would make Azerbaijan the second largest importer of Turkmen gas after China.

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