Bahrain has no fears about potential gas shortages despite deadlock in a major gas deal with Iran, said a leading government official.

Energy Minister Dr Abdulhussain Mirza confirmed negotiations with Tehran remained frozen due to recent political developments.

But he said Bahrain was not worried about the prospect of the deal collapsing and said it would not lead to any gas shortages.

"Bahrain is already well on the way towards getting gas from other sources, including from some of the neighbouring countries and Russia," he said.

"We are all set also to award a contract later this year to set up a liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminal off the coast of Hidd and this should be operational by 2014."

Dr Mirza said deep drilling for gas within Bahrain was also going to take place and was expected to uncover sufficient quantities available.

"If the Iran deal had gone through, we would have had gas from there in a few years and that is the time it will now take to get our own gas at our own terminal," he said.

"There is no desperation, far from it. We have taken some very pro-active steps to meet our demands."

Dr Mirza said if a deal with Iran went through in the future Bahrain would have a huge quantity of gas available.

"We would then be able to import at our LNG terminal and re-export to other places," he said.

Our sister newspaper, the Gulf Daily News earlier reported Bahrain's proven natural gas reserves stood at 7.7 trillion cubic feet (cu ft) at the end of last year.

The BP Statistical Review 2011 also said the country produced 1.3 billion cu ft per day last year.

Production

Dr Mirza earlier said gross gas production from the Awali field was expected to increase to 1.6 billion cu ft per day by 2014 and Bahrain could double its output by delving deeper.

He said it would be possible to increase energy production from gas from a summer peak of around 1.9 million cu ft per day to 2.7 million cu ft per day in 2024.

Foreign Minister Shaikh Khalid bin Ahmed Al Khalifa announced in May that the gas import agreement with Iran had been frozen until further notice due to the troubled political relations between the two countries. – TradeArabia News Service