Baku, Azerbaijan, Feb. 12
By Gazenfer Hamidov – Trend:
Iran has achieved a new record in gas storage during the current fiscal year, started March 2017.
Iran has two gas storage facilities, Serajeh and Shourijeh in Qom and Razavi Khorasan provinces, with a capacity to store 4-5 billion cubic meters of gas.
Based on a recent report by semi-official Fars news agency, Iran has injected 3.8 billion cubic meters of gas to its storage facilities, including 1.3 bcm to Serajeh and 2.5 bcm to Shourijeh during the first 10 months of the current fiscal year (started March 2017), which is a new record.
The natural gas stored in Sarajeh facility mainly is used to meet gas demand of Tehran in the cold season, meanwhile Shourijeh supplies gas to north eastern provinces of the country.
The country has extracted 13 mcm/d of gas from Shourijeh and 8 mcm/d from Sarajeh facility during the peak consumption days of the cold season in the current year.
Based on Iran’s oil ministry plans about 10 percent of the country’s annual gas consumption should be stored in the facilities.
The latest statistics unveil that Iran’s National Gas Company has delivered 515 million cubic meters of gas per day to various sectors during the first three quarters of the current fiscal year (started March 20, 2017). It means that the country’s annual gas consumption surpasses 188 billion cubic meters, so the country should store some 18 billion cubic meters of the gas per year, which is over 3.7 times more than the current storage capacity.
So bringing into service new gas reservoirs is a major policy of the Islamic Republic’s oil ministry.
The country plans to add five more storage units to increase the capacity to 11.3 and secure gas supply stability in the coming years.
Iran plans to increase commercial gas production capacity to 1.25 bcm/d by 2021.
