Iran Unveils Plan to Plug Into Russian, Central Asian SCO Members’ Electricity Grids

The Islamic Republic became an acceding member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization – a political, economic, and security bloc comprising over half of Eurasia, at the SCO’s summit in Samarkand last month. In the years before that, Iran worked to build strategic ties with SCO heavyweights, including Russia and China.

Iran has floated an ambitious project to connect the national electricity grid to those of Russia and Central Asian SCO members via a transmission line passing through Turkmenistan, Deputy Energy Minister for International Affairs Mohammad-Ali Farahnakian has announced.

“We are trying to connect our country’s energy system to Russia through the eastern side of the Caspian Sea,” Farahnakian told the Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) on Sunday.

The plan would “make it possible to exchange electricity with members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization,” and was first raised at the summit of the Caspian Sea states in June in Ashgabat, Turkmenistan, the official said.

Farahnakian, who also serves as an advisor to Minister of Energy Ali Akbar Mehrabian, specified that Russia and other former Soviet states already share a connection via a unified electricity grid, and that all that’s needed for Tehran to link up to the network is to build a powerful new transmission line through Turkmenistan. The Islamic Republic has completed the infrastructure up to the border, with action now needed from the Turkmenistani side.

Iran exports vast quantities of its ample domestically-sourced electricity supplies to its neighbors, including Pakistan and Afghanistan. Iranian electricity sales to Iraq over the past two decades have proved crucial in staving off a socio-economic disaster after a substantial portion of Baghdad’s domestic generating capacity was destroyed by Western sanctions, the 2003 US invasion, and Daesh (ISIS).*

In his interview with IRNA, Farahnakian indicated that Iran has five active electricity transmission lines with Iraq, and could ramp up electricity exports to Syria and Lebanon if Syrian infrastructure destroyed by terrorism is repaired. Iran also plans to establish connections with the nations of the southern Persian Gulf.

In a related development on Sunday, representatives from Russia, Iran, Azerbaijan, and Central Asian nations signed a joint statement on increasing transit cooperation, pledging to promote coordination and collaboration in transit and transportation operations, including tariff unification, the issuance of one-year visas for drivers, and other matters.

Iran has steadily ramped up its electricity generation capabilities since the 1980s as part of a national development strategy focused on industrialization and mechanization of agriculture, with output reaching 363,000+ Gigawatt hours (GWh) in 2021. The country exported about $600 million worth of electricity to Iraq, Pakistan, and Afghanistan during the same period, with further export capacity hampered by a lack of investment.

Russia and Iran have dramatically increased economic cooperation in recent months, signing a $40 billion energy cooperation agreement to develop Iran’s untapped oil and gas fields in July, and agreeing to expand cooperation in automotive manufacturing after Western automotive giants pulled out of the Russian market. The two countries have also sought to create alternatives to the use of dollars and euros in trade, plus a SWIFT-style bank transfer system, and engaged in negotiations on the interoperability of one another’s payment systems.

On Thursday, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak told reporters that Moscow and Tehran are “hammering out separate routes and mechanisms pertaining to oil and gas swap deals” aimed at declawing the impact of Western sanctions.

* A terrorist group outlawed in Russia and many other countries.