Baku, Azerbaijan, May 20
By Fatih Karimov - Trend: Fuel consumption in Iran grows by 5.5 percent annually, and if the current situation continues, Iran will be turned into an absolute consumer of energy by the next three decades, said Meysam Tabatabaee, the chairman of the Iranian presidential office's committee for biofuels.
Statistics say energy consumption in Iran is tantamount to energy consumption in the European Union, or the Middle East, Iran's Shana news agency quoted Tabatabaee as saying May 20.
He added that the high consumption of energy in Iran is based on the false belief that the country holds rich deposits of oil and gas.
While Iran's annual energy consumption level surpassed 1,600 million barrels of oil equivalent (OE) until March 2014 and the perspective of new upstream projects remains dim due to the sanctions imposed by the Western countries, Iran is going to commission several energy efficiency plans to impede the runaway growth in energy usage.
According to the statistics released by Iran Energy Efficiency Organization (IEEO), the country's annual energy consumption growth pace was 3.9 percent from 2005 to 2012.
Iran's energy consumption level in 2013 was 1,600 million barrels of OE, of which 400 million barrels of OE was wasted before being consumed, the head of Iran Energy Efficiency Organization Hossein Sajjadi said in May 2014.
Edited by CN