Daily natural gas consumption in the household sector has risen by 100% and reached 500 million cubic meters over the last few days, the head of the state-run National Iranian Gas Company’s Dispatching Department said.
“The upsurge is expected to continue unabated, as the weatherman has forecast cold spell in the coming days,” Mohammad Reza Joulaei was also quoted as saying by the Oil Ministry’s news portal.
NIGC injects close to 1 billion cubic meters of gas into the Iran Gas Trunkline (IGAT), of which 50% are used at homes, he added, warning that thermal power plants will have to start burning liquefied fuel if households do not reduce their gas use.
NIGC has raised gas production, especially from the giant South Pars Gas Field in the Persian Gulf, to meet the growing needs of power plants. However, the household sector’s demand is so high that gas delivery to power plants has to be cut sooner or later.
While average global gas consumption has risen by 2% in the past three decades in Iran, demand has hiked by a massive 4% during the same period.
"Such consumption patterns must change, or else there will another energy crisis,” experts have regularly warned.
According to Ahmad Zamani, a deputy manager at NIGC, gas use in the household sector in other countries, including Russia and the US, doubles in winter, but the figure rises sixfold in Iran between December and February, which is totally abnormal and puts tremendous pressure on NIGC.
Export Commitments
Iran is not only unable to fulfill its international export commitments, but the thermal power plants also have to burn eco-unfriendly mazut instead of gas, causing massive pollution in metropolitan cities, the NIGC official said.
Expressing concerns over the injudicious consumption pattern in the country, Zamani said the future of energy supply in Iran is at risk unless subscribers rethink their consumption habits.
“A rise in energy tariffs might have some short-term effects, but it has proven to be inefficient in the long run, as consumers get used to high prices and resume their bad habits,” he said.
Constructing energy-efficient buildings with special materials that reduce energy wastage and replacing traditional gas meters with smart devices are the best course of actions. However, they may take long as there are close to 27 million ordinary gas meters in Iran.
Of the total figure, 27,000 belong to high-consumption industries and should be converted to smart gadgets so that NIGC can monitor consumption more accurately.
IGAT is a series of nine large diameter pipelines built to supply gas from refineries in the south (Khuzestan and Bushehr provinces) across the country.
SP has 24 phases, all of which (except Phase 11) are now operational. The field, which Iran shares with Qatar, covers 9,700 square kilometers, 3,700 square kilometers of which (South Pars) are in Iran’s territorial waters and the rest is owned by Qatar.
