TEHRAN (Agencies) — Iran on Wednesday said it had temporarily halted gas exports to Turkey owing to a supply crunch at home brought on by the cold weather, the state-run IRNA news agency reported.

"Currently, our export (of gas) to Turkey is zero," Oil Minister Kazem Vaziri-Hamaneh said, according to AFP.

Iran has been supplying Turkey with gas through a pipeline from Tabriz to Ankara since 2001, under a major contract that mandates the Islamic Republic to supply several billion cubic meters of gas annually.

"I apologized to the Turkish energy minister (Hilmi Guler) in a telephone conversation and promised to address these problems as soon as possible," he added.

Vaziri-Hamaneh expressed hope that the opening of Parsian Refinery in the next ten days would help solve the issue, Iranian Students News Agency (ISNA) reported him as saying.

“We hope the second phase of Parsian Refinery, in the southern province of Fars, will come on stream within the next ten days, and we can resume gas export to Turkey,” ISNA quoted him.

According to the Oil Ministry official website, SHANA, the gas produced from Homa and Shanol fields will reach Parsian Refinery early next week.

“Parsian Refinery is to receive 30.5 million cubic meters of gas per day from Homa and Shanol fields starting early next week,” SHANA quoted director for oil and gas projects at the Iranian Central Oil Fields Company (ICOFC) as saying.

Vali-Mohammad Abul-Hassani added that the refinery is close to completion, and the refined gas will be conveyed to the cross-country pipeline.

Under the gas contract signed by Iran and Turkey in 1996, Iran was obliged to supply three billion cubic meters to Turkey in the first year, with the volume rising to 10 billion cubic meters by 2007, AFP reported.

Vaziri-Hamaneh said that supply was normal around the country except for certain areas in the northern Kordestan and West Azarbaijan provinces where the "gas has been cut due to the decrease of pressure" in the pipelines.