ArmInfo. Russia reduced the supply of natural gas to Armenia in the first half of 2018 by 13.62% per annum to 940,206.8 thousand cubic meters, against a 33% increase in the same period a year earlier. According to the Customs Service of the Republic of Armenia, in value terms, imports respectively decreased by 13.59% to $ 141.1 million.
At the same time, supplies of natural gas from Iran, on the contrary increased by 6.1% to 195,246.5 thousand cubic meters with similar growth in value terms up to $ 29.3 million
In total, 1,135,453.4 thousand cubic meters of natural gas were imported to Armenia in the first half of 2018 (with a y-o-y decline of 10.8%), worth $ 170.4 million (with a y-o-y decline of 10.7%).
According to the source the deliveries of stripped gas increased by 93.9% to 5,443 tons in y-o-y terms with 2-fold increase in the customs value to $ 2.2 million. In particular, imports of stripped gas from Russia increased by 29.4% to 3,475.1 tons with cost growth by 41.3% - to $ 1.5 million, and from Iraq - imports increased several-fold from 122.1 tons to 1 931.1 tons, while the cost grew from $ 61 thousand to $ 729 thousand. In particular, in the first half year 2018 Armenia started importing stripped gas from Iran in the amount of 36.3 tons for $ 14.5 thousand.
As part of the indicative balance approved each year in accordance with the Armenian-Russian intergovernmental agreement of December 2, 2013, the volume of duty-free deliveries of natural gas to Armenia from Russia in 2018 is provided at 2.4 billion cubic meters, the actual volume of deliveries of natural gas in the first half of 2018 amounted to 0.94 billion cubic meters.
The volume of natural gas supplies to Armenia from Iran in 2018 is provided in the volume of 0.4 billion cubic meters, the actual volume of natural gas supplies in the first half of 2018 was 0.22 billion cubic meters.