Baku, Azerbaijan, Feb. 23
By Fatih Karimov - Trend: Iranian power plants have consumed over 47 billion cubic meters of gas since the beginning of the current Iranian fiscal year (March 21, 2014).
Nasser Ebrahimi, an official with the National Iranian Gas Company (NIGC), said the company increased the supply of gas to power plants with the goal of decreasing liquid fuel consumption, Iran's Shana news agency reported on Feb. 23.
Some 140 million cubic meters of gas on average per day has been delivered to power plants during the current year compared to 100mcm in the previous year, he noted.
This issue has had a positive effect on reducing air pollution, he said.
He also said that the industrial sector and the household sector consumed 30bcm and 80.5 bcm of gas during the mentioned period.
During a few weeks of last winter, Iran's housing gas consumption reached about 500 mcm per day, which led to a gas shortage that cut gas delivery to power plants, petrochemical units, gas injection to old oil fields and the industrial sector.
Cutting gas supplies to power plants led them to burn $30 billion of liquid fuels. The Iranian government had to decrease gas delivery to petrochemical plants from 35 mcm per day in summer to 15 mcm per day in winter. This caused a drop in the petrochemical production by 7.5 million tons during the last fiscal year (started on March 21).
Edited by CN