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Iran cuts liquid fuel supply to power plants

Business Materials 14 March 2015 19:09 (UTC +04:00)

Baku, Azerbaijan, Mar. 14

By Fatih Karimov - Trend:

Iran has reduced the supply of liquid fuel to power plants as it plans to replace liquid fuel with natural gas.

The supply of liquid fuel to power plants decreased by 1.8 billion liters in the current Iranian fiscal year, which started on March 21, 2014, Iran's Shana news agency reported on March 14.

The Iranian Energy Ministry had called for supplying 3 billion liters of liquid fuel to power plants, but the Oil Ministry boosted gas supply to the power plants, leading to $630 million saving in imports of gas oil.

Some 140 million cubic meters of natural gas has been supplied to the power plants in the current Iranian fiscal year, which began on March 21, 2014, a 40mcm rise year on year.

Iran has saved $10 billion through replacing liquid fuel with natural gas in power plants.

Hamid Reza Araqi, managing director of the National Iranian Gas Company, said on March 1 that the volume of gas delivered to power plants rose by 13 billion cubic meters during the first 339 days of the current Iranian fiscal year, began on March 21, 2014, compared to the same period in the past year.

This issue has had a great effect on reducing air pollution, he said.

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).

Iran holds 33.6 trillion cubic meters of proven gas reserves, sharing 18 percent of total global gas reserves, which puts the country in the top of the world's gas holders list.

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