Baku, Azerbaijan, Jan. 9
By Dalga Khatinoglu – Trend:
Iran converted about 59 billion cubic meters (bcm) of gas to electricity in 2016, about 10 percent more than 2015, the combination of Energy Ministry’s weekly reports indicate.
During 2016, Iran converted about 53.867 bcm of gas to electricity.
According to an official document, prepared by the National Iranian Gas Company and seen by Trend, Iran plans to increase gas-to-power conversion to around 70-75 bcm by 2020.
Coming to Iran’s fiscal year, the statistics of the latest weekly report of Energy Ministry indicate that the country converted about 50.628 bcm of gas to power during 9 months and 10 days of the current fiscal year (286 days), started on March 21.
The figure indicates a 8.2 percent growth year-on-year, but it seems the growth would decrease due to halting Turkmen gas export to Iran since January 1, 2017. Iran imported 9 bcm of Turkmen gas in 2015.
Iran plans to decrease gas-to-power conversion to avoid gas shortage in its housing sector during winter.
During 286 days of the current fiscal year, Iran also consumed 3.129 billion liters of gas oil and 2.543 billion liters of fuel oil in the power sector, which indicated 27.3 percent and 51.6 percent decrease year-on-year respectively.
During this period, Iran generated 235.606 billion kilowatt hours (kWh) of electricity.
Iran’s electricity export also decreased by 26 percent to 5.974 billion kWh, while its imports increased by 6 percent to 3.468 billion kWh in 286 days.
Iran’s power generation capacity also increased by 1.813 gigawatt (GW) to 75.916 GW since the beginning of Iran’s fiscal year.