More Problems On The Home Front

I reported a while back on Iran's Home Front Problems. It appears they have some new problems. They can't deliver on their promises. Natural gas deliveries to be exact. The Washington Times reports:

Iran has stopped exports of natural gas to Turkey due to a tight domestic market caused by cold weather, but vows to restart shipments soon.

Iran supplies Turkey from the Tabriz to Ankara pipeline as part of a 1996 contract.

This year Turkey was to receive a total of 10 billion cubic meters of Iranian gas, the state-run IRNA news agency reports.

"Currently our export to Turkey is zero," Oil Minister Kazem Vaziri-Hamaneh said.

He said he called the Turkish energy minister and apologized "and promised to address these problems as soon as possible."

"We hope the second phase of Parsian Refinery, in the southern province of Fars, will come on stream within the next ten days, and we can resume gas export to Turkey," he said, according to the Iranian Students News Agency.

Turkish news sources report:

Iran, which was selling 27 million cubic meters natural gas to Turkey daily before December, has gradually dropped this amount to 4 million cubic meters since then. The Iranian Oil Minister Kazem Veziri Hamaneh, calling Turkish Minister for Energy Hilmi Guler after the complete cutoff, told him that because of high domestic consumption associated with the extremely cold weathers they had to make this decision. Noting that they called on the Iranian people to decrease their gas consumption, the Iranian minister said that if the Iranians would be more responsible he could guarantee that gas exports to Turkey would resume soon. Hamaned further said they hoped to activate the natural gas facility in the southern province of Fars and resume gas flow to Turkey.

In a country where socialist central planning is the order of the day, this has got to hurt. On top of that Iran has been unable to meet its OPEC quota for the last 18 months. Another economic hurt.

H/T reader Paul.

Cross Posted at Classical Values