Azerbaijan, Baku, Mar.3 / Trend F.Mehdi/
Iran will commission a natural gas liquids (NGL) production plant by the end of the next Iranian calendar year (March 2014) at the Kharg Island, located in the Persian Gulf, ISNA quoted Iranian Offshore Oil Company official Reza Bayazi as saying.
The project is now 50 percent complete, he said, adding that the plant will have the capacity to intake 600 million cubic meters of natural gas per day.
The plant will cost €1.2 billion to be inaugurated, he added.
In September 2012, National Iranian Gas Company's managing director Javad Oji told the Mehr news agency that Iran will implement a plan for putting out flares at gas refineries by the end of the end of the fifth five-year development plan (March 2016), aiming to reduce energy consumption at gas refining facilities.
He added that 25 million cubic meters of gas will be saved at gas refining units.
Associated gases can bring benefits for the country, but they are flared up and burden huge losses to the nation, instead.
Some 40 million cubic meters of associated gas in oilfields are burnt daily.
Iran has allocated $2 billion to collect associated gas at Kharg and Bahregan oil regions, the deputy oil minister for engineering affairs said in November 2011.
Hamdollah Mohammadnejad told the Shana news agency that the sum will be spent to collect 17 million cubic meters of associated gas.
He added that different projects, worth around $500 million, have been developed for collecting up to 99 percent of associated gases.
Some $15 billion cubic meters of associated gas is burnt at Iran's oilfields, bringing the country around $3 billion of loss annually.
Since 2001, Iran's annual imports of gas have been more than exports by nearly 71 billion cubic meters on the average, the Pana news agency reported. Iran is the second major holder of gas deposits in the world.