FNA - CEO of the Iranian Gas Engineering and Development Company (IGEDC) Hassan Montazer Torbati announced that the country is due to collect payment for its gas supplies to Iraq in euro.

"The revenues of these (gas) exports are based on euro as stated in the contract (with Iraq)," Montazer Torbati said on Saturday.

He added that the Central Banks of Iran and Iraq have made the decision about the currency to be used for gas exports after the US sanctions against Iran.

Iran is currently exporting 36.24 million cubic meters of gas on a daily basis, which marks a 45% rise in comparison with the figures of the last calendar year (March 21, 2017- March 20, 2018).

Iran’s Plan and Budget Organization announced in a report earlier this month that the country had increased its daily export of gas from 25 million cubic meters to 36.24 million cubic meters in the current Iranian year (started on March 21, 2018).

The report added that Turkey was the sole importer of Iranian gas in the last year, but this year Iraq also started importing gas from Iran.

Also, earlier on December 18, Armenian Ambassador to Tehran Artashes Tumanyan said that his country was interested to import more gas from Iran.

Iran owns the world’s largest natural gas reserves after Russia, and is also Turkey’s second biggest gas supplier after Russia.

Iran’s natural gas is of crucial importance to Turkey as the energy-hungry country uses a significant portion of imported Iranian gas to generate electricity.