New Delhi: Iran has rejected India's demand for a price equivalent to international long-term gas supply contracts for the Iran-Pakistan-India pipeline gas saying New Delhi should forget about buying Iranian gas at a low price.
Iran is seeking at least $7.2 per million British thermal unit (mBtu) price for the gas it wants to sell to India. But India is willing to pay no more than $4.2 per mBtu price for the gas.
Iranian Oil Minister Kazem Vaziri-Hamaneh, ahead of the meeting of Oil Secretaries of the three countries here on August 3-4, termed the Indian offer as based on "subsidised domestic prices" and said Tehran will not sell its gas at the proposed price.
"If the Indian side is not ready to buy our gas at its real price, we have no obligation to sell it at the price lower than the real one," he was quoted as saying by the Iranian Oil Ministry's news agency PIN.
The third meeting of the tripartite working group on the IPI gas pipeline project would be held here on August 3-4.
Iran had forwarded a gas pricing formula wherein the gas price is linked to Brent crude oil with a fixed escalating cost component (10 per cent of Brent crude oil). Tehran is seeking a price of $7.2 dollars per mBtu, with a three per cent annual escalation.
"This price is more than 50 per cent the prevailing market determined gas price in India," a source said.
With PTI inputs
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