DUSHANBE, May 21, 2015, Asia-Plus — Tajik authorities have denied information of Iranian fuel deliveries to Tajikistan as ‘baseless.’
“Information about the beginning of delivery of Iranian oil products to Tajikistan does not correspond to the facts,” Yormahmad Begahmadov, the head the Oil and Gas Extraction and Processing Department at the Ministry of Energy and Water Resources, told
Asia-Plus
in an interview.
According to him, the ministry does not have any information about the import of oil products from Iran. “Iranians offer and promise quite a lot, but all this usually remains at the level of intentions and on paper,” said Begahmadov. “We have not yet discussed any concrete proposals on oil product deliveries with them.”
He noted that they had earlier conducted negotiations with Iran regarding delivery of 200,000 tons of crude oil for domestic oil refinery, Kapital, but nothing had come out of the negotiations.
Begahmadov further added that Tajik entrepreneurs might carry out negotiations with Iranian companies regarding oil product deliveries if they could.
We will recall that Iranian news agency
Mehr
reported on May 10 that an official at National Iranian Oil Refining & Distribution Company (NIORDC), Esmail Hasham Firouz, while pointing to the country’s plan to export its first cargo of gasoline to Tajikistan, has called Iraq and Afghanistan as Iran’s traditional markets of petroleum products.
Hasham Firouz reportedly discussed Iran”s latest status of oil products export to regional markets to the reporters on May 10. “Iran will soon send its first 500-ton gasoline shipment to Tajikistan,” Hasham Firouz told reporters.
He reportedly pointed to the beginning of the marketing and identification of new markets for export of petroleum products, particularly kerosene, liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) and gasoline, saying that gasoline export to Tajikistan will be operational for the first time and if successful, the export of oil products will be expanded to the Central Asian countries.
