by Henriette Schroeder
It all began with a newspaper headline “Iran Willing to Settle Turkmenistan Gas Row Out of Court.” In an article the Financial Tribune, the First Iranian English Economic Daily, reported about the ongoing dispute between Iran and Turkmenistan after Turkmenistan had cut off its natural gas supplies to Iran in December 2016.
According to the article Turkmengaz had increased its gas prices nine-fold from $40 per cubic meters to $360 and Iran thus has around $2 billion unpaid dues for gas deliveries.
Based on a statement by the National Iranian Gas Company (NIGC) this dates back to the sanctions era, when Iran had difficulties doing international business due to banking restrictions, but they underscore that the NIGC has “cleared a big portion of its unpaid debt by providing Turkmengaz with goods and engineering service.” In this ongoing struggle Iran seems to have changed its mind, as only a little while ago, they insisted on Turkemngaz lowering its prices, per contractual terms, otherwise it would have to appear in front of the International Court of Arbitration.
But in the article the managing director of the National Iranian Gas Company, Hamidreza Araqi, is quoted as saying at the end of last year: “We hope to end the dispute through dialogue… Iran still has time for taking legal action against Turkmenistan but any issue, in my opinion, can be settled in negotiations.”
I found this change of heart by the Iranians interesting and decided to research the issue and write an article for the Turkmen Iniatitive for Human Rights.
Keeping in mind that the Financial Tribune is an Iranian publication I decided to contact the National Iranian Gas Company to interview the managing director Mr.Araqi, or another high ranking official, myself.
It didn’t seem too difficult, after all the NIGC has a website that lists an email address for the managing director and for their public relations office.Little did I know that this was the beginning of a wild goose chase.
The email was not answered, so I figured maybe it ended up in their spam folder and sent it again.No answer.OK, so let’s try their phone number.
For a few days in a row I tried calling the NIGC’s offices in Tehran.No one ever picked up the phone, it was simply ringing and ringing and ringing.
No voice mail either.
After a bit of research in the internet I found an article with a list of European firms that allegedly have contact with the National Iranian Gas Company.
One of the companies was BASF Schaffhausen.Maybe they would have further contact data for me?I sent them a mail and got a polite, firm and friendly response by their Head of Media Relations that they could not help me either.
So, I tried my luck and left a message on the Austrian OMV corporation’s voice mail at their press and public relations office.I want to underscore here that I had not found any contacts between the OMV and the NIGC during my research, I just figured a huge international gas company might be able to help.
But they remained silent.Maybe these international companies were afraid that I was trying some kind of undercover reporting about contacts with Iranian companies, or about issues related to sanctions?
Even though it would have been a rather clumsy attempt on my side.
Last but not least the Iranian Embassy in Vienna.Maybe they would have a valid, up to date contact for the NIGC for me?As the embassy only lists two mail addresses on the press section of their website and no phone number, I decided to call various extensions first.
Maybe a human being could help me?Alas, for days on end I got the same recorded message in German and Farsi the person you are trying to call is busy, please try again later.’ The same message no matter what extension I called, or at what time of the day.
Then one day someone yelled hello’ into the phone.A human being!Before I had even finished my sentence he yelled something like konsular’ and banged down the phone.
So, I wrote an email and sent it to both addresses listed.Of course, one mail came back immediately, recipient unknown.’ I never got an answer from the second mail address that hadn’t come back.
All in all, it was a rather Kafkaesque experience. After all it was only about an interview with Hamidreza Araqi about his own public statements about the relations between Turkmenistan and Iran. A pretty paranoid reaction. Or maybe certain Iranians simply don’t like telephones.