Gas storage volume has been doubled in the northeastern Shourijeh underground gas storage facility in Sarakhs City in Khorasan Razavi Province, the managing director of Hasheminejad (Khangiran) Gas Refinery said.
"The volume of gas stored in the reservoir has increased by over 106% vis-à-vis the corresponding period of last year (ended March 20, 2015)," Nasser Eslami was quoted as saying by Mehr News Agency.
According to Eslami, the amount of gas stored in the facility stood at 435 million cubic meters in the first half of the previous year while the number has touched 894 million cubic meters in the same period of this year.
"As gas consumption is lower during the first six months of the year, a considerable amount has been stored in the UGS facility to meet peak demand in winter," he said.
The stream of incoming sour gas from wells in Sarakhs reached 6.8 billion cubic meters during the March-September period this year from about 6.72 billion cubic meters in the same period of last year.
Shourijeh UGS facility, the country's largest gas storage project, has a daily injection and withdrawal capacity of 20 million cubic meters per day.
The project, which includes construction of injection wells and facilities as well as natural gas and gas condensate processing plants, will officially become operational by the weekend.
Once ready, three compressors, each with a capacity of 3.6 mcm will pump 10 mcm of gas into the facility. In winter, 20 mcm of natural gas can be extracted from the facility and integrated into the national distribution grid.
The entire storage capacity of the facility is 4.6 billion cubic meters, 2.4 billion cubic meters of which will be stored in the first phase.
Shourijeh UGS facility is located 25 km southeast of Sarakhs and 160 km from Mashhad, adjacent to Hasheminejad Refinery in northeast Iran.
