Iran's semi-official Fars News Agency quotes the director of the National Iranian Gas Co., Mohammad Javad Oji, as announcing an agreement with Syria, Iran's main Arab ally, to build a 1,240-mile pipeline to carry Iranian gas to Syria across Iraq to power electricity generating plants.

The project, pumping 3.88 billion cubic feet per day through the 56-inch diameter pipeline, "will later extend through southern Lebanon to the Mediterranean Sea and Europe," Oji said.

Syrian Oil Minister Sufian Allawi was quoted as saying the strategic pipeline will at some stage "be connected to the Arab Gas pipeline" that runs from Egypt's Mediterranean coast to Israel and Jordan.

There have been plans to extend the Arab line to Syria but it's not clear whether that will proceed following the fall of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in a pro-democracy uprising.

In December, Turkey's state-run Petroleum Administration gave the green light for the Turang Transit Tasimacilik Co. to construct a gas pipeline from Iran across Turkey to Germany.

This project would allow Iran, desperate to upgrade and expand its investment-starved energy industry and break out of the sanctions imposed by the United Nations, the United States and the European Union last June.

Iran has proven gas reserves of 1045.7 trillion cubic feet, the second largest in the world. But it is only able to produce a fraction of that, some 5.5 trillion cubic feet a year because of its international isolation.

The United States has long been striving to cut out Iran, along with Russia, from a network of pipelines across Central Asia and Turkey designed to carry oil and gas to Europe.

The prime example of that is the $4 billion oil pipeline from Azerbaijan on the Caspian Sea via Georgia to a Turkish terminal on the eastern Mediterranean.

The 1,100-mile system built by British Petroleum is known as the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline and began pumping in May 2005.

Iran has long been viewed in some quarters as a possible gas provider to Europe, which wants to break Russia's stranglehold on its gas supplies.

For a time, it was considered a candidate for the 2,500-mile Nabucco pipeline to eventually carry up to 150 billion-459 billion cubic feet of gas per year from Iraq, Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan to Europe via Turkey.

Tehran is striving to boost relations with Turkey, its northern neighbor, to ease its international isolation while Ankara is determined to become a major regional power and a key energy hub between East and West.

That involves breaking away from its Cold War alliance with the United States and pursuing a more robust, independent policy. Thus Ankara's policies could play a significant role in helping Iran exports its gas.

The sanctions have "prevented Iran from bringing in experienced Western upstream operators capable of helping it develop its vast gas reserves, while dissuading potential gas buyers and forcing the Nabucco consortium to look elsewhere," according to a Feb.1 Oxford Analytica report.

"Against this, Tehran has encouraged interest from upstream operators in countries not directly involved in the sanctions, such as China -- which is reported to have invested close to $40 billion in the Iranian oil and gas sector -- and Turkey, which signed a far-reaching memorandum of understanding on cooperation in July 2007."

That involved Turkish state oil company TPAO developing three blocks of Iran's giant South Pars gas field in the gulf, with reserves estimated at 1,800 trillion cubic feet.

Large volumes of gas would be transported to Turkey via a TPAO-built pipeline.

Some would be re-exported to Europe, with the rest pumped to three Turkish-built power plants in Iran, with the power then exported to Turkey, a big step toward ensuring the country's energy security.

However, Analytica observed that Turkey, the only Muslim member of NATO, will likely "not commit publicly to joint projects if they pose a serious threat to its Western relations."

It added that "Ankara may succeed … in avoiding a confrontation with Washington while keeping a foothold in Iran, and keeping potential gas cooperation projects alive."

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