More than 95% of Iran’s population are linked to the gas supply network, the oil minister said.
Addressing a weekend ceremony to launch several national projects, Bijan Namdar Zanganeh added that the number of villages connected to the gas grid has increased from 14,000 in 2013 to 35,000 now, which indicates a 2.5-fold increase in the past eight years, the Oil Ministry’s news agency Shana reported.
“In view of these measures, 95.1% of Iranians now have access to natural gas, which is a unique figure in the world. Currently, 98.4% of the urban population and 84.6% of the rural population are linked to the gas grid, while in 2013, 95% of the urban 54% of the rural population had access to natural gas,” he said.
“In order to expand the gas network, 84 turbochargers have been constructed and more than 5,000 kilometers of gas transmission pipelines have been installed in the past eight years.”
The minister noted that natural gas has replaced liquefied fuel in many power plants, which helps preserve the environment and raise petroleum exports.
“Liquid fuel consumption in thermal power plants have declined from 43% in 2012 to 20% in 2000. This has prevented the consumption of more than 58 billion liters of liquid fuels worth $26 billion and the export of such petroleum products in 2020 had more than quadrupled compared to 2012,” he said.
Increasing Output
Natural gas production capacity is 1 billion cubic meters per day, which will increase by 10% to 1.1 bcm/d in July.
The rise in production will come from phases 13 and 14 of South Pars Gas Field in the Persian Gulf, which are not fully operational yet. The sixth, ninth, 10th and 11th Iran Gas Trunkline (IGAT-6, IGAT-9, IGAT-10 and IGAT-11) are being extended.
IGAT is a series of nine large diameter pipelines built to supply gas from refineries in the southern Khuzestan and Bushehr provinces.
Of the total output, close to 75 mcm/d are sold to neighboring states, namely Iraq and Turkey. Armenia and Azerbaijan also buy gas via swap deals.
Despite the fact that NIGC’s export network has been extended to face delivery challenges, export capacity is unlikely to rise unless domestic consumption is curtailed.
According to the official, consumption in household and commercial sectors accounts for 70% of the total output and close to 230 mcm/d of gas are delivered to power plants and petrochemical plants.
“Without reducing gas consumption, especially in thermal power plants, we will not be able to maintain the balance between gas production and consumption in the future because we have no other South Pars gas field to tap,” Zanganeh said.
Gas Grid Expansion
Speaking at the same ceremony, Managing Director of the Iranian Gas Engineering and Development Company Bahram Salavati said a project to install 700 km of gas transmission pipelines and build 200 MW of gas pressure facilities will be completed by the end of the current Iranian year (March 2021-22).
On Thursday, projects supplying gas to 21 cities and 2,809 villages, including 251,689 urban households and 181,576 rural families as well as 4,664 industrial units in the provinces of West Azarbaijan, South Khorasan, Kerman, Lorestan, Khuzestan and Fars were inaugurated.
“The supplementary turbocharger stations of Bidboland, Farashband, Hosseinieh and Safashahr facilities were also launched,” Salavati was quoted as saying by Shana.
