A glance at gas flaring details in Iran

Iran’s refined gas production level reached 82.2 billion cubic meters during the first half of current fiscal year, 4 percent more than the same period in last year.

According to Iran Oil Ministry’s information obtained by Trend, currently the country’s raw gas production capacity is 700 million cubic meters per day (mcm/d) -including flaring and re-injection-, while the sweet gas output capacity stands at 550 mcm/d.

During the first half of year, Iran accelerated maintenance of refineries as well as developing the South Pars Phase 19 to add 14 mcm/d of natural gas to grid. The country is also to produce natural gas from phases 20 and 21 by winter.

Iran is also planning to add 100 mcm/d refining capacity by late 2015.

Iran’s commercial gas production level reached about 202 billion cubic meters per day last year, while additional 100 mcm/d of gas production was planned for current fiscal year.

Iran says the country’s gas production would reach 1,100 mcm/d by 2020, and along with increasing gas production, the government is optimizing the gas consumer sectors to decrease domestic consumption by 50 mcm/d to pave the way for exporting 200 mcm/d of gas in four years.

One of the plans for reaching this goal is gathering 20 mcm/d of flaring gas.

Details of flaring gas

According to Iran Oil Ministry’s documents, it is planned to gather flared associated gas of 39 oil fields (50 phases) as well as 10 phases of South Pars gas field to prevent burning of 19.78 mcm/d gas in torches.

The mechanism of plan is selling gas at very low price (3 cents per cubic meters in average) from March 2016 to March 2020 to companies who construct power plants, mini LNG and GTL plants close to these fields. The companies must intake at least 80 percent of paring gas.

Fields, operated by four major companies, affiliated to Oil Ministry

Dalga Khatinoglu is an expert on Iran’s energy sector, head of Trend Agency’s Iran news service