New Delhi : Iran has rejected India's demand for a price equivalent to international long-term gas supply contracts for the Iran-Pakistan-India pipeline gas saying New Delhi should forget about buying Iranian gas at a low price.

Teheran is seeking at least $7.2 a million British thermal unit (mBtu) price for gas it wants to sell to India and Pakistan through the over $7 billion pipeline while New Delhi is willing to pay no more than $4.2 a mBtu for gas delivered at its border.

Iranian Oil Minister Kazem Vaziri-Hamaneh, ahead of the meeting of Oil Secretaries of the three countries here on August 3-4, termed the Indian offer as based on "subsidised domestic prices." Teheran would not sell its gas at the proposed price.

"If the Indian side is not ready to buy our gas at its real price, we have no obligation to sell it at the price lower than the real one," he was quoted as saying by the Iranian Oil Ministry's news agency PIN. Iran had forwarded a gas pricing formula wherein the gas price is linked to Brent crude oil with a fixed escalating cost component (10 p.c. of Brent crude oil). Teheran is seeking a price of $ 7.2 a mBtu, with a three per cent annual escalation. Besides the Brent linkage, the Iranian formula does not prescribe a floor and ceiling for the gas price, the source said. - PTI

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