Iran with 34 trillion m³ of gas reserves has massive plans to almost double its output in the next five years but the new gas will not travel very far.
Over the next five years Iran plans to raise gas production from 255bn m³/yr today to about 460bn m³/yr by 2021. But it is planning to market the gas in a small radius.
During Iran Upstream Congress 2016, held in Tehran in mid-October, NGW met with Iran’s top gas officials and energy policy makers, who explained the country’s gas plans for the next five years.
At present, although it has the world’s largest gas reserves, Iran is only a marginal gas exporter. It imports just over 7bn m³/yr from Turkmenistan and exports just under 8bn m³/yr to Turkey, while it sells gas on a barter basis to Armenia and has some small gas swaps with Azerbaijan. So while the country produced 192.5bn m³ of commercial gas in 2015, it consumed almost all of that, with net exports totalling a mere 1.3bn m³.
www.naturalgasworld.com