Tehran, Iran, Oct. 20
By Dalga Khatinoglu – Trend:
Iran has increased its amount of gas storage in the Shourijeh Storage Facility at Shahid Hashemi-Nejad Gas Refinery located in Khorasan Province, bordering with Turkmenistan.
The refinery processes about 13.7 billion cubic meters per year (bcm/y) of Khangiran gas block, which produces about 17 bcm/y.
Seyyed Majid Manbeti the managing director of Hashemi-Nejad refinery told Mehr Oct.20 that the gas storage in underground facility increased by 40 percent to 1.246 bcm during the first half of the current fiscal year, (March 21-September 22).
Iran stores gas in Shourijeh gas facility in warm months and re-extracts about 20 million cubic meters per day (mcm/d) in cold seasons.
Manbeti said that during the first half of current fiscal year some 6.49 bcm of sour gas was processed in the refinery, which indicates a 10 percent growth year-on-year.
Last year, Iran doubled gas intake from Turkmenistan to 9 bcm/d, but recently the country said that with regarding Iran’s gas output increase, the Turkmen gas is not a necessity any more.
Iran increased gas output from South Pars from 250 mcm/d in 2013 to about 420 mcm/d in 2015, bringing the country’s total gas output to about 735 mcm/d.
Iran uses Turkmen gas in several provinces in north and Northeastern regions, which consumed about 21 bcm/yr of gas in 2014. There is no information about the current statistics, but Iran has launched 5 compressors to increase the gas deliveries to this region.
Iran recently proposed Turkmenistan to focus on gas swap issue instead of gas exports to Iran.
Iran has another gas storage facility Serajeh, close to Capital Tehran, locates in the north of country as well. There is not updated official information, but Iran had planned to store about 1.3 bcm of gas in this facility, located in Qom City.