Baku, Azerbaijan, July 29
By Umid Niayesh - Trend:
The share of gas in fuelling Iran's power plants has increased by 40 percent during the four-month period from March 21 to July 22, compared to the same period of preceding year.
The country has supplied its power plants with 160 million cubic meters of natural gas per day during the period, deputy oil minister Hamid Reza Araqi said, Iran's Mehr news agency reported on July 29.
In total, some 19.2 billion cubic meters of natural gas were transported to the power plants during the period, Araqi said, adding that the figure is 5.5 billion cubic meters more compared to the same period of preceding year.
It should be noted that Iran's fiscal year starts on March 21.
In the previous fiscal year, Iran delivered around 36 billion cubic meters of gas to its power plants and consumed around 27 billion liters of mazut and gas oil to generate electricity.
But the officials announced that they will increase gas delivery to power plants up to 42 billion cubic meters in the current year.
According to SHANA News Agency, some 2.02 billion liters of liquid fuel (diesel oil and mazut) were consumed in Iran in the first two weeks of summer (145 million liters per day). The figure was around 1.044 million liters (some 150 million liters per day) in the last week of spring.
Iran has 75 power plants with the liquid gas reserves enough for 45 days. The power plants have the capacity to receive over 200 million cubic meters of gas per day, but due to gas shortage the country meets around 40 percent of the power plants' needs of liquid fuel.
The country holds 33.6 trillion cubic meters of proved gas reserves, sharing 18 percent of total global gas reserves which puts Iran in the top of the world's gas holders list. However, lacking technology and investment led to long-term delays in implementation of gas production projects.