May 21, The Iran Project �Managing Director of National Iranian Gas Company (NIGC) has announced that Persian Gulf countries tend to buy gas from Iran.

Speaking to a reporter on Sunday, Hamid Reza Araghi said Iran post-election era is a proper opportunity to negotiate with Arab states in this regard.

Although the Persian Gulf has about 730 billion barrels of proven oil reserves and over 70 trillion cubic meters of natural gas resources but the countries, like Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and UAE despite having rich resources of oil, do not have independent gas reserves, and Iran is the only country that can supply the regional countries' needs through pipelines.

Islamic Republic of Iran is already exporting gas to Turkey and plans to broaden its gas exports to regional countries.

The NIGC official announced earlier that Iran will start exporting gas to Iraqi city of Basra from next year because the war-wracked country does not seem to access its significant reserves of gas until 2018 or even 2020.

In recent years, Iran has negotiated with UAE and Kuwait to export gas to these countries and is also in an advanced stage of technical talks with Oman to pipe natural gas to the sultanate through the Persian Gulf.

Reportedly, Iran will raise its daily gas export capacity to 200 to 300 million cubic meters in the next few years.