Following a decline in temperature, natural gas consumption in the household sector has reached 600 million cubic meters per day, up 20% compared to last month when the figure was 500 mcm/d, the head of the state-run National Iranian Gas Company’s Dispatching Department said.
“Daily consumption has witnessed an uptrend and is expected to surpass 650 mcm/d in the coming days as the mercury has plunged to minus zero degrees Celsius in most provinces and the weatherman has forecast more extreme weather at the weekend,” Mohammad Reza Joulaei was also quoted as saying by ILNA.
Of the total NIGC’s daily production of 1 billion cubic meters, 60% are used at homes, which is a massive volume. It is expected to reach 70% sooner rather than later, he added.
The official noted that the national grid is stable and measures have been taken to prevent gas pressure reduction or supply interruption.
“Heavy consumption is taking its toll on industries, power stations and petrochemical plants, as they are being gradually cut off from the national grid,” he said.
Joulaei said if subscribers cut home temperature by 2 degrees centigrade, as much as 50 mcm of gas can be saved daily, which is equivalent to the gas produced in two phases of the giant South Pars Gas Field per day.
Almost 40% of gas in the Middle East are consumed in Iran, an unreasonably high level by any standard. The residential sector is the largest consumer followed by power plants and petrochem companies.
With a population of 85 million, Iran burns more than 140 billion cubic meters of gas annually, not far from China, the world’s second-largest economy and the most populous country in the world, which consumed 191 billion cubic meters in 2015.
NIGC has raised gas production, especially from South Pars 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.
Average Global Consumption
While average global gas consumption has risen by 2% in the past three decades in Iran, demand has hiked by 4% during the same period.
"Such consumption patterns must change, or else there will be another energy crisis,” experts have 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.
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.
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.
South Pars 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.
