Tehran, Iran, June 17
By Milad Fashtami - Trend:
Iran will be able to save $100 million per year by cutting 10 percent of total gas consumption.
Deputy Director of National Iranian Gas Company Mojtaba Sheykhbahayi said on June 17 that optimizing the consumption pattern should be started from the oil ministry itself, Iran's IRNA News Agency reported.
Mehdi Jamshidi, an official with the National Iranian Gas Company, said on March 11 that Iran managed to decrease gas power plants' consumption rate by 10 per cent by installing data management systems.
"By doing so, some 4 billion rials (some $133,000 based on the exchange rate of USD) have been saved," he said.
"The mentioned system has been put into operation in a number of gas power plants so far," Jamshidi said, adding that the system will be installed in all the country's power plants in near future.
Iran was forced to limit gas supply to power plants and industrial units in the cold months in order to be able to supply enough gas to households.
The average of Iran's domestic gas consumption was around 570 million cubic meters in the cold days of February.
Iranian Oil Minister Hamidreza Araqi said on Feb. 22 that households and power plants natural gas consumption has been increased by twofold in the past decade, Iran's Mehr News Agency reported.
"The country's production capacity, however, has remained the same," Araqi explained.
"Iranian households' consumption account for 31 per cent of the country's total gas consumption in summer, but the figure rises to 80 per cent in winter," he said, adding the sudden rise leads in natural gas supply cuts to petrochemical units.
According to BP's latest yearly report, Iran's dried gas output is about 160 bcm, a little more than domestic consumption level.
Iran exported 7.5 bcm of gas to Turkey and imported 4.5 bcm of gas from Turkmenistan in 2012, according to BP's report.