Iranian Oil Minister Gholam-Hossein Nozari says Tehran will not export its gas to Qatar to be liquefied in the Arab country's plants.

“We have agreed to set up a joint company to develop projects in the three countries or any other place in the world, but we do not accept that Iran's gas will be exported to Qatar to be turned into liquefied natural gas (LNG),” Nozari told reporters on Monday after signing a gas agreement with his Turkish counterpart, Hilmi Guler, in Tehran.

Senior energy officials from Iran, Russia and Qatar met in Doha last Wednesday to discuss future trilateral cooperation in the gas sector.

Russian daily Kommersant had quoted an unnamed Russian official as saying that Russia's Gazprom, Qatar Liquefied Gas Company Ltd. and National Iranian Oil Co. aim to set up a venture to produce gas from Iran's South Pars field and liquefy it in a gas plant in the Qatari Ras Laffan Province.

“The Islamic Republic agrees that Qatar and Russia will invest in South Pars and the LNG be produced in Iran on partnership basis,” Nozari added.

The Doha meeting followed high-level discussions held in Tehran in October, in which the three countries agreed to coordinate their actions more closely and called for the formation of a group of natural gas exporting countries, similar to the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC).

AKM/HGH