DUBAI: The National Iranian Gas Company (NIGC) has been forced to slash gas supplies to industrial consumers as cold weather drives up heating demand, a senior official said.
Iran has some of the world’s largest reserves of gas but increases in production have lagged behind rapidly rising demand over the last decade.
Cold winter weather has pushed Iranian demand to around 600 million cubic metres a day (mcm/d), forcing the state gas monopoly to cut supplies for power, petrochemicals and cement producers, NIGC deputy director Abdolhosian Samari told the Shana news agency.
Iran’s energy minister has repeatedly warned over the last few months that Iran faces a gas supply crisis because of sluggish progress on developing its vast reserves. “The Petroleum Ministry has given priority to meeting gas needs of the household sector,” oil ministry news service Shana quoted Bijan Zanganeh as telling a parliamentary energy committee last week.
“Therefore it has no option except restricting gas supply to some petrochemical plants as well as the industrial sector to counter the gas shortage.”
The NIGC’s Samari said Iran is producing around 570 mcm/d of gas and importing around 30 mcm/d. But with residential and commercial sector demand running at around 460 mcm/d, he said there was still not enough available to feed all Iranian industries while keeping Iran’s population of around 77 million warm.
By comparison, gas demand in Britain, Europe’s biggest market, rarely exceeds 400 mcm/d, even in mid winter, data from the UK’s gas network operator shows.
Artificially low, government-set gas prices have spurred a boom in energy intensive industry around the Gulf over the last decade, driving a surge in demand while discouraging investment in new gas production projects.
Samari said Iran’s oil ministry believes that raising the price of gas for petrochemicals producers should help temper its rampant gas consumption.
The director of the National Iranian Oil Products Distribution Company, told Shana that the company was delivering 135 million litres of oil products per day to power plants because of the natural gas shortage.
Reuters
