Azerbaijan, Baku, Feb.19/ Trend F.Milad
Iran's annual gas exports will reach 34 billion cubic meters by the end of Iranian year of 1395 (March 20, 2016), Deputy Oil Minister Javad Owji said.
By reaching that point, the country's gas income will hit 14 billion dollars, the ISNA News Agency quoted Owji as saying.
Owji, also the managing director of the National Iranian Gas Company (NIGC), went on to note that annually some $6 billion should be invested in the country's gas sector.
The Iranian oil minister Rostam Qasemi announced last month that Iran plans to sign some new gas export contracts in near future.
By the end of the Fifth Five-Year Economic Development Plan (March 2016), Iran's gas production capacity would reach one billion cubic meters per day, Rostam Qasemi said, adding that by the end of the plan, the country will also produce 5.6 million barrels of oil per day.
Iran, who sits on the world's second largest natural gas reserves after Russia, has been trying to enhance its gas production by increasing foreign and domestic investments, especially in its South Pars gas field.
South Pars is part of a wider gas field that is shared with Qatar. The larger field covers an area of 9,700 square kilometers, 3,700 square kilometers of which are in Iran's territorial waters (South Pars) in the Persian Gulf.
The remaining 6,000 square kilometers, referred to as the North Dome, are in Qatar's territorial waters.
The Iranian gas field contains 14 trillion cubic meters of natural gas, about eight percent of the world's reserves, and more than 18 billion barrels of LNG resources.
Iran is currently producing around 285 mcm of gas per day from South Pars.
Iranian Oil Minster Rostam Qasemi said in November, 2012 that 775 million cubic meters (mcm) per day of gas could be extracted from South Pars after all its phases come on stream.
Over the course of 15 years, Iran has extracted 500 billion cubic meters of gas from South Pars.
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