As the world's third largest natural gas producer, Iran can expand its footprint in international markets by investing in major liquefied natural gas projects and consuming the natural resource more prudently.
Omid Shokri Kalehsar, an independent expert on energy security in Washington, told ILNA on Tuesday that the country is deprived of advanced know-how and technology to convert natural gas into LNG. Thus, promoting judicious energy consumption can and will help the government in increasing natural gas exports.
"Iran produces 850 million cubic meters of gas a day but is struggling to increase its footprint in global markets because most of what is produces is consumed locally," the analyst said.
Reports say Iranians burn as much as 500 mcm of gas per day during the cold winter seasons leaving little, if anything, for export markets.
Regarding gas export to Turkey, now said to be near 21 million cm/d, he said the gas contract with Ankara is valid until 2026 and negotiations to renew it have not yielded results so far.
"Should the talks fail, we will lose our biggest gas market in the region," he warned, noting that Turkey has invested heavily in importing LNG from neighboring Qatar and the United States.
The reimposition of US sanctions notwithstanding, for now Turkey will continue importing Iranian gas to meet its high demand in the cold winter season in the southern regions. However, there is no assurance that the agreement with the Turks will survive long into the future.
Turkey has started importing gas from Azerbaijan via the Trans-Anatolian Natural Gas Pipeline and it is due to import Russian gas from the land-based TurkStream gas pipeline soon.
Highlighting Iran’s vision in the LNG industry, he noted that there are plans to expand LNG projects namely the major liquefied natural gas venture, known as "Iran LNG" in Tombak Port, 50km north of Assaluyeh in Bushehr Province.
International sanctions disrupted the Tombak plan and the new US sanctions that ban oil and gas majors from investing in Iran have become another big hurdle.
National Iranian Oil Company signed a contract with Helma Vantage of Norway and Iran’s Kharg Gas Refining Company in 2017 to deploy a 500,000-ton barge to liquefy gas from the giant South Pars field in the Persian Gulf and store and transfer the cargo. However, following criticism from some lawmakers, Oil Minister Bijan Namdar Zanganeh said in February that the deal was put on hold due to contractual constraints.
The critics then had claimed that the price of gas bound for the Norwegian side was unacceptably low.
