Baku, Azerbaijan, Dec. 10
By Rahim Zamanov - Trend:
Iran's Natural Gas Storage Company's Managing Director Masoud Samivand said that the country has started pumping 4.5 million cubic meters of gas per day from the Sarajeh gas storage facility to the national gas network, the IRIB News Agency reported on Dec. 9.
"The figure would reach 10 million cubic meters per day in cold weather," Samivand said.
"The Shoorijeh gas storage facility will be inaugurated next year. Once the facility comes on stream some 30 million cubic meters of gas would be added to the country's production capacity," he explained.
Samivand said on Nov. 10 that the country has stored 1.3 billion cubic meters of gas in the Sarajeh gas storage facility.
"Some 300 million cubic meters of gas was pumped into the national gas network last winter," the IRIB News Agency quoted Samivand as saying.
Samivand also said that Iran will start injecting gas to the Shoorijeh gas storage facility in the next Iranian calendar year (to start March 21, 2014).
"The injection rate of the Sarajeh gas storage facility has increased in the current year (which started March 21)," he said.
He went on to note that Iran has identified 40 potential gas storage sites.
According to former managing director of National Iranian Gas Company, Javad Owji, Shoorijeh is the Middle East's biggest gas storage facility.
"Iran will store extracted gas from the joint gas fields, especially the giant South Pars field, in the facility," he said.
"The facility has the capacity to store over 4 billion cubic meters of gas," he added.
Massoud Samivand said in June that once Shoorijeh gas storage project comes on stream, Iran will become needless of gas imports from northern neighbors.
"The Shoorijeh gas storage facility can provide sufficient gas to meet the consumption in the northern and eastern provinces of Khorsan Razavi, North Khorasan, South Khorasan, Mazandaran, Golestan, Gilan, amd Ardebil," he explained.
"The project will come on stream at the cost of two trillion rials (some 163.1 million dollars based on the official rate of USD and 66.6 million dollars based on the free market's price) which is 10 per cent less than the anticipated figure," Samivand added.
The Shoorijeh gas storage facility, located at the northeastern province of Khorasan Razavi, has the capacity to store 4.8 billion cubic meters of natural gas.
Shoorijeh gas storage facility has two phases and its injection capacity is 10 million cubic meters per day.
Once the gas storage facility comes on stream, Iran will rank as the world's fifth country in regards to the largest gas storage capacity. The United States of America with 121 billion cubic meters ranks first on the list. Iran currently stands at the 19th place.