Tehran, Iran, March 17
By Mehdi Sepahvand - Trend:
Iran has produced a record amount of gas in the current Iranian fiscal year (to end March 19).
This year, the country produced 158 billion cubic meters of gas, an improvement by 8 billion from last year, Director of Distribution at Iran's National Gas Company Nasser Ebrahimi said, IRNA news agency reported March 17.
He added that the country's current gas consumption stands at 700 million cubic meters per day, equal to 4.5 million barrels of oil products.
"That means that gas comprises 70 percent of the country's fuel basket," the underlined.
BP Statistical Review of World Energy 2015 shows that Iran possesses the world's largest proven natural gas reserves, at 34 trillion cubic meters - or 18.2 percent of the world's total proven reserves.
Despite having the world's biggest gas reserves, Iran only shared 5 percent of global natural gas production, at 172.6 billion cubic meters in 2014 (excluding recycled and flared gas), according to the report. The government says it can rely on the profit it makes by using the gas as a cheap fuel inside the country.
Iran started delivering gas to urban and rural areas in 1987. Currently 88 percent of the country's households are connected to the national gas distribution pipeline.
The country also has the largest amount of gas-powered cars in the world - close to four million cars running on gas. This year Iran's power sector passed a milestone in terms of replacing liquid fuels by natural gas.
The latest weekly report of Iran's Energy Ministry, published on its official website on March 15 said the country's power plants were supplied with 53.5 billion cubic meters (bcm) of natural gas during 350 days of the current fiscal year, 16.4 percent more than in the same period last year.
On the other hand, diesel and mazut consumption in electricity sector decreased by more than 31 .3 percent and 31.6 percent respectively to around 5.7 billion liters and 6.7 billion liters in the mentioned period.
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