Baku, Azerbaijan, Jan. 18
By Umid Niayesh - Trend:
Iranian Oil Ministry has decreased gas injection to oil fields to deliver more gas to the country's thermal power plants during the cold season, Gholam Hossein Babadi, an official with the National Iranian South Oil Company said.
Delivering gas to the power plants instead of injecting to the oil fields will continue during the current winter and will allow to save $4 billion worth of fuel oil, Babadi said, the country's Fars news agency reported Jan. 18.
The saved fuel oil will be exported and the revenues will be invested in oil industry projects, he said.
Gas injection to oil fields is a long-time process, Babadi said. "We have a 20-year plan for some fields and three months of decline in gas injection volume will not impose serious negative effects."
He also expressed hope that the pressure decline in oil fields would be compensated next year by injecting more gas.
Babadi further said that the oil ministry is studying injection of CO2 in some oil fields including Ramin.
The decrease in gas injection to Iranian oil fields, which are mostly in the second half-life, will reduce Iran's capability to increase oil production.
About 180 million cubic meters of gas should be injected into Iranian old oil fields each day, while according to the US Energy Information Administration, Iran has injected about 12.6 percent of its produced gross gas into oil wells, which was some 77.5 million cubic meters per day in 2012.
There is no any recent official statistics about gas injection to old oil fields, however, Iran produces 660 million cubic meters of enriched gas, according to the latest official statements. Some 575 million cubic meters of this volume is refined and 35 million cubic meters is supplied to petrochemical plants. Therefore, Iran has only 50 million cubic meters to inject to oil fields.
The Islamic Republic faced severe gas shortages last winter. In addition to cutting the gas supply to power plants, which led to burning of $30 billion worth of liquid fuels, the Iranian government had to decrease gas delivery to petrochemical plants, gas injection to old oil fields and industrial sector.
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