Baku, Azerbaijan, Apr. 12
By Dalga Khatinoglu – Trend:
Iran increased gas deliveries to power plants by 4.7 percent to 57.74 billion cubic meters (bcm) during last fiscal year (ended Mar. 20, 2016), while the plan was a 20 percent growth to 65 bcm.
However, the statistics of Energy Ministry indicate a huge growth in replacing liquid fuels with gas in power generation sector during last four years.
Iran had planned to deliver 65 bcm of gas to power sector during last year, and increased the growth by 8.5 percent until the end of fall, 2016, but it seems Turkmenistan’s cutting its gas export to Iran during winter caused a decrease in gas deliveries to power sector.
Turkmenistan exported 9 bcm of gas to Iran in 2015, but it cut gas deliveries in January 1, 2017 due to Iran’s $2 billion debt to Ashgabat.
However, weekly statistics of Iran’s Energy Ministry indicate that the gas flow to power plants during 11 days of current fiscal year (March 21-March 31) experienced a 14.13 percent growth to 1.411 bcm.
Iran’s gas deliveries to power sector increased from 35 bcm in a year to March 20, 2014 to 57.74 bcm the last fiscal year, which indicates a huge growth.
The liquid fuels use in this sector decreased from 27.42 billion liters to 10.18 billion liters during the mentioned period.
Iran’s nominal power generation capacity also increased by 2.464 gigawatts (GW) to 76.567 GW from March 2016 to March 2017.
The country’s actual power generation capacity and actual electricity generation stood at 59 GW and 286 billion kWh during last fiscal year.
Iran increased electricity import by 4 percent to 4.336 billion KWh, while its electricity export decreased by 33 percent to 6.503 billion kWh during the last fiscal year.
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Dalga Khatinoglu is the head of Trend Agency’s Iran news service, follow him on Twitter: @dalgakhatinoglu