Baku, Azerbaijan, Nov. 29
By Rahim Zamanov - Trend:
Iranian Oil Minister Bijan Namdar Zanganeh said on November 29 that the coming winter will be the hardest one in the country's history in terms of gas shortage.
However, Zanganeh said that the Iranians will face no difficulty in the season, the IRNA News Agency reported.
He went on to note that the country's gas sweetening capacity will increase by the end of the current Iranian calendar year (March 20, 2014).
"The gas sweetening output of phases 15 and 16 of the South Pars refinery will reach to 25 million cubic meters per day by the end of the current year," he said.
Zanganeh also said development projects of the South gas field will be accelerated in the next calendar year which starts March 21, 2014.
Iran's domestic gas consumption has reached half a billion cubic meters per day.
The figure shows a 9 to 10 percent increase compare to the same period of time previous year.
Increasing demand from households has caused a gas shortage in some parts of the country, the Mehr News Agency reported.
Currently, Iran's power plants need 140-150 million cubic meters of gas per day, but with the gas shortage the country is facing, the power plants have turned to consuming gas oil or kerosene.
Iran's household and business consumption currently stands 340-345 million cubic meters which is 15-20 percent more than the same period previous year.
The Mehr News Agency previously reported that based on the data collected by Iran's Oil Ministry, the country needs over 700 million cubic meters of gas per day in the coming winter.
According to the latest report released by United States' Energy Information Administration (EIA), Iran's gross gas output in 2011 was around 224 billion cubic meters. Some 67 percent of the mentioned amount was turned into dry natural gas, while 16 percent was injected to the oil wells, and some 17 percent was burned.
The British Petroleum Company also said in its latest report that Iran's dry natural gas output in the previous year was around 160.5 billion cubic meters.
In general, Iran's dry natural gas output plus the amount injected to the oil wells is 570 million cubic meters per day.
Iran's gas consumption in the warm months is low. So the country could have stored a considerable amount of gas in its storage facilities for the cold months. But currently, just the Sarajeh gas storage facility with 3.3 billion cubic meters capacity is operational, which can only supply enough gas for 5 days of consumption at the mentioned rate.
