Baku, Azerbaijan, Apr.14
By Fatih Karimov - Trend:
Iran's oil minister has warned over high gas consumption by the household sector.
Bijan Namdar Zanganeh added that through taking simple measures, gas consumption could be lowered by 30 percent, Iran's Mehr news agency reported on April 14.
There are some 2 million engine houses and 20 million gas heaters across the country, he said, adding that if the current trend of consumption continues, the country will need to import natural gas even if all the phases of the South Pars gas field come on stream.
Installing smart meters could help us save gas consumption to a great extent, the minister said.
On March 2, the managing director of Iranian Fuel Conservation Company, Nasrollah Seifi, said that households' consumption accounts for the lion's share of the country's total gas consumption.
He went on to note that Iranians currently pays only 16 percent of the real price of natural gas and the government pays for the rest in the form of subsidy.
According to him, the final price of natural gas after implementation of the subsidy reform plan should be around 18,700 rials per cubic meter. The figure currently stands at 700 rials.
BP's annual report suggests that Iran's gas consumption was around 156.1 billion cubic meters in 2012. Iranian officials say that the consumption rate has been increased in the current calendar year, which started on March 21, 2013.
Iranian Mehr News Agency reported in January that the country's gas consumption is around 160 billion cubic meters per year now.
While according to BP, around 440 billion cubic meters of gas was consumed in the European Union (excluding Turkey's consumption and liquid gas consumption) in 2012.
According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration's report, which was released in September 2013, the EU's gas consumption did not changed significantly in the first half of 2013. So a simple calculation shows that the EU's gas consumption is 2.75 times more than Iran's.
EU's consumption accounted for 13.4 per cent of the world's total gas consumption in 2012. Over 3.314 trillion cubic meters of natural gas was consumed across the world in the mentioned year.