By Dalga Khatinoglu
Iran refined 89.373 million cubic meters of gas during the last seven months.
Iran has not commissioned any new gas field (or any phase of a field) since 2009, but in early 2014, Iran started early gas production from Phase 12 of giant South Pars gas field by producing 12 million cubic meters per day (mcmpd) and doubled this volume to 25 mcmpd in July.
The Middle Eastern country also increased associated gas production by 27 mcmpd, the head of Iranian Central Oil Fields Company (ICOFC) Salb-Ali Karimi announced on Niv.2.
Now, Abdol-Hossein Samari the deputy of deputy director of the National Iranian Gas Co. (NIGC) told Shana that during first seven months of Iran's current fiscal year, some 89.737 bcm of gas was refined, some 5 bcm more that the same period in last year.
Iran's fiscal year is based on solar calendar system, starts on March 21.
During the end of Iran's Ex-President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's term, the refinery of Phases 15 and 16 of South Pars was inaugurated in 2013.
Samari said that during the first seven months of the current fiscal year, some 3.331 bcm of gas was refined at the Refinery of phases 15 and 16 (two phases are a joint project).
Iran hasn't commissioned these phases and nowadays, the soar gas of phases 6 to 8 is being delivered to the refinery of phases 15 and 16.
Iran scheduled refining about 40 mcmpd gas from three gas refiners of Phase 15 until late November.
Until 2009, Iran inaugurated 10 of 28 phases of South Pars, producing about 290 million cubic meters per day (mcmpd) of gross natural gas, but the figure increased by 25 mcmpd so far by implementation of 12 phase, the field's biggest phase.
The phase 12's final capacity will be 82 mcmpd of gas production and it is projected to be completed by 2016.
The giant South Pars gas field, which counts above 40 percent of the country's gas production, is the world's biggest gas field with above 33 trillion cubic meters (cm) of reserves. It's a joint field between Iran and Qatar.
Qatar's gross gas production at South Pars joint gas field is nearly two times more that Iran's output. Qatar is the world's biggest liquid natural gas producer and produces 155 billion cubic meters of gas annually.
The Iranian government has accelerated development of several upstream gas projects to increase the output by 100 million cubic meters per day (compared to 2013 figures) by winter.
Iran sits on 33.6 trillion cubic meters of natural gas reserves; ranks the first in the world, but has faced gas shortage in winter during last years. Iran's refined natural gas production was about 485 mcmpd in 2013. It is while, the country's gas consumption increased by 100 mcmpd to 520 mcmpd on November 9th.
Iran has two gas storage facilities (Serajeh and Shourijeh) which 2 bcm of gross gas have been injected there during last months and is being extracted to compensate gas deficiency currently.
Dalga Khatinoglu is a specialist on Iran's energy sector and head of Trend Agency's Iran News Service