Energy Minister Hamid Chitchian said the simultaneous development of national electricity and gas networks has come at a huge price for Iran.
"This has led to a loss of financial resources over the years," he said, calling for implementing value engineering to help boost efficiency in all energy projects, Fars News Agency reported. Chitchian made the statements while addressing the Fifth National Conference of Value Engineering in Tehran University. Value engineering helps provide the functions in a project at the lowest cost. It promotes the substitution of materials and methods with less expensive alternatives, without sacrificing functionality.
"Around 850 water projects are planned to be developed nationwide at an estimated cost of $66 billion, of which only $2.3 billion have been allocated so far," Chitchian said, adding that it could take 30 years to complete these projects with the present budget.
He added that the Energy Ministry had long honed in on building large power plants, but that policy has changed in favor of expanding distributed generation–an approach to produce electricity close to the end users to help eliminate the costs and complexity of transmission and distribution.
The minister also referred to billions of dollars in oil and gas revenues over the past 50 years and said many countries generate more money from Iran without having access to massive hydrocarbon resources because of efficient energy use.
Chitchian referred to the Resistance Economy, a set of guidelines advocated by the Leader of Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei to counter the sanctions, promote domestic growth and reduce consumption.
He said the biggest pivot of Resistance Economy is efficiency and called for all state organizations to implement the policy.
This is while Iran is trailing in terms of drawing oil and gas from joint fields with its Arab neighbors due to a lack of modern technology and budget. According to reports, Qatar is drawing 1.6 times more from the joint field. Iran holds the world’s biggest natural gas reserves and the fourth-largest proven crude oil reserves.
It holds 17% of the world's proven natural gas reserves and more than one-third of OPEC's reserves. Iran's largest natural gas field, South Pars, is estimated to hold roughly 40% of the country's total reserves.
