Iran Gas Engineering and Development Company has completed pipe-laying operations to transfer natural gas from Zahedan to Zabol in southeastern Sistan-Baluchestan Province, managing director of the state-run firm said.
“IGEDC, a subsidiary of the National Iranian Gas Company, laid a 250-kilometer pipeline from Zahedan to Zabol and the supply of natural gas to industrial units and households has started,” Reza Noshadi was also quoted as saying by IRNA.
Expanding the gas grid in the province, including supply to 30 towns and villages, Chabahar and Konarak thermal power plants, Khash and Zabol cement factories, as well as other small and large industries, has been planned in the current fiscal year (started March 21).
The pipeline supplying gas to Sistan-Baluchestan is an extension of Iran Gas Trunkline-7 from Asalouyeh in Bushehr Province pumping from the giant South Pars Gas Field in the Persian Gulf.
The completion of gas grid in southeastern regions would be a great boost to Chabahar Port, Iran’s largest ocean port. Chabahar has been officially designated as a free trade and industrial zone by the government.
A 300-kilometer pipeline is being laid to link the city to Iranshahr City in the center of Sistan-Baluchestan.
Sistan-Baluchestan is the second largest province but one of the poorest of the 31 provinces. The underdeveloped region is partially deprived of piped gas, because of which NIGC supplies households and industries with compressed natural gas and liquefied petroleum gas.
Around 36 million liters of LPG are consumed in the province annually, which can be curbed “when pipe laying projects are complete”.
In fact, NIGC has been supplying CNG through pipelines to about 5,000 households in the city of Zabol since 2019.
Temporary Measure
According to the official, CNG delivery is a temporary measure to provide gas to deprived regions until the main plan to supply natural gas to consumers via pipelines is implemented.
Noting that to implement the natural gas delivery plan, $1 billion have been spent on pipe-laying operations, he expressed hope that most cities in Sistan-Baluchestan will be connected to the national grid by the yearend.
Besides expanding the urban gas network, linking power plants to the national grid is also underway to curb the consumption of liquid fuel and improve air quality.
“MAPNA Group has been tasked with the development of Shourijeh natural gas storage facility in the northeastern Khorasan Razavi Province,” chief of IGEDC said.
The total capacity of Shourijeh facility, which currently stands at 2.25 billion cubic meters per day, is planned to reach 4.5 bcm per day.
Due to the need to supply gas to the north and northeast in the cold seasons when consumption rises considerably and the sharp decline in production expected in the Mozdouran reservoir by 2025, the development project has been planned to increase the capacity of Shourijeh storage facility, which is the main feedstock supplier of Khangiran Refinery in Sarakhs County, Khorasan Razavi Province.
The engineering group is expected to complete the project within three years. The project includes drilling 28 production/injection wells, construction of wellhead facilities and pipelines, building a gas collection and distribution center, constructing gas injection facilities with a capacity of 20 million cubic meters per day and building refinery facilities for gas processing with a capacity of 10 mcm per day.
IGEDC is conducting technical research in five new areas, one of which is the Kashan Salt Dome in Isfahan Province.
Most oil reservoirs are not suitable for storing gas and this explains why research on other reserves, whose geological formations are made up of salt and water, is on the IGEDC agenda. The construction of new gas reservoirs is a priority for the Oil Ministry.
Noshadi noted that gas production has increased from 7 mcm per day to 870 mcm per day in the past four decades.
