Iran repairing PKK-damaged pipeline

TEHRAN, Aug. 30 (UPI) -- The flow of natural gas from Iran to Turkey will return to normal in about a week, a statement from the Iranian energy ministry said.

An explosion last week in Agri in eastern Turkey forced authorities to shut down a natural gas pipeline from Iran. Local officials said militants from the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, were behind the attack.

Valiollah Dini, a representative from the Iranian energy minister, said repairs were expected by September.

"Based on an announcement by (Turkish pipeline company) Botas, gas exports to Turkey would be resumed within the next seven days," he told the semiofficial Mehr news agency Monday.

Turkish authorities blamed the PKK for a July 21 attack on a separate section of the same pipeline. Both countries are fighting Kurdish militants along their shared border.

Sergei Kupriyanov, a spokesman for the Russian gas company, said his company was doubling the amount of gas transferred through the Blue Stream gas pipeline to Turkey.

Blue Stream carries gas from Russia across the Black Sea to northern Turkey. Kupriyanov said the gas increase was in part a response to militant attacks on a gas pipeline carrying Iranian gas.