Iran now exports liquid fuels thanks to gas output growth

Baku, Azerbaijan, May 10

By Dalga Khatinoglu - Trend:

Latest statistics indicates a huge increase in Iran's liquid fuels exports thanks to the gas output rise.

Iran produced 178.1 billion cubic meters (bcm) of sweet gas during the last fiscal year (FY), ended on March 21, while the raw gas production capacity stands at 700 million cubic meters per day (mcm/d), which makes 255 bcm yearly.

The sweet gas output rose 6 percent during the mentioned period year-to-year.

The country annually uses about 47 bcm of raw gas in the CNG and petrochemical plants, and in re-injection to oil fields. Iran's flare gas stands at around 11 bcm per year.

Iran saw a huge increase in the exports of liquid fuels over the past year, Esmail Hasham Firouz, director for imports and exports at the National Iranian Oil Refining and Distribution Company (NIORDC), told Mehr news agency on May 9.

Meanwhile, Hassan Aghayan, the NIORDC deputy managing director, told SHANA news agency that the liquid fuels consumption decreased significantly during the last FY.

Hasham Firouz's and Aghayan's statements indicate that the decrease in usage caused more liquid fuels exports.

The growth in Iran's CNG output in mid-2000s had already decreased gasoline consumption significantly, while the increasing natural gas supply to power plants caused huge decline in fuel oil and gas oil burning in this sector during the last three years.

(Based on NIORDC stats)

Iran increased the share of the natural gas consumed by power plants from 66 percent in 2012 to above 82 percent in 2015.

Iranian power plants consumed 55.267 bcm of natural gas during the last FY, while this figure was 34.5 bcm three years ago.

The country's power plants used only 12.65 billion liters of gas oil and fuel oil during the last year, while the figure for 2013 was 26.85 billion liters.

(Based on NIORDC stats)

Hasham Firouz also said Iran increased the jet fuel export by 300 percent to 15,000 tons during the last fiscal year, compared to the previous year.

However, the country halted the naphtha export the last FY. The country exported 66,000 tons of naphtha from March 2014 to March 2015.

As for the current fiscal year, which started on March 21, Mohsen Qamsari, the international affairs director at the National Iranian Oil Company, told Mehr news agency on May 6 that Iran increased gasoline import to 372 million liters per month (274,000 tons) since the beginning of the current FY, while the monthly gas oil and fuel oil export increased to 0.4 and 1.4 million tons, respectively.

During the first month of the current FY, Iran exported 130,000 tons of LPG.

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Dalga Khatinoglu is the head of Trend Agency's Iran news service, follow him on Twitter: @dalgakhatinoglu