The national gas grid had a daily capacity of 816 mcm of gas sold to households, industries and power plants last year. With the completion of the sixth and ninth Iran Gas Trunkline (IGAT-6 and 9), over 50 mcm was added to this capacity, Mehdi Jamshidi Dana was quoted as saying by the Oil Ministry news agency Shana.
IGAT-9, which extended from South Pars Gas Field onshore refineries in Asalouyeh, Bushehr Province, to Behbahan in Khuzestan Province, has now reached Bazargan border crossing in northwestern West Azarbaijan Province.
Iranian Gas Transmission Company, a subsidiary of the National Iranian Gas Company, has divided the country into 10 districts, of which District 7 (from where IGAT-9 passes) includes Hamedan, Markazi, Lorestan, Ilam, Kurdestan, Qazvin and Zanjan provinces.
IGAT-6 moves gas from South Pars to the southern and western regions, namely Hamedan and Kermanshah Provinces.
Located in the Persian Gulf straddling the maritime borders between Iran and Qatar, South Pars stretches over 9,700 square kilometers, of which 3,700 km belongs to Iran. The Iranian side of the field contains an estimated 14 trillion cubic meters of gas and 18 billion barrels of condensates.
Iran is developing the mega gas project in 24 phases, 23 of which are either complete or in the final stages. Development of phase 11 started recently.
“Currently, there are 37,400 kilometers of high-pressure transmission lines and in terms of global ranking, we are fourth, which is unique in West Asia,” Jamshidi Dana said.
There are 86 pressure boosting stations, each with three, four or five turbochargers. Sometimes all of them have to be operational in the winter, and in some cases spare turbines must be used to deliver maximum gas throughout the country, he added.
About 110 billion cubic meters of sweet gas was supplied in the first five months of the current year (began March 20), which is about 12% more than the same period last year.
Gas production capacity has reached 1 billion cubic meters per day, about two thirds of which comes from the South Pars Gas Field.
More than 30,000 villages with 4.6 million households and 1,148 cities with over 18 million households are connected to the national gas network across the country.
Gas is supplied to 97% of people in urban areas and 82% in the rural regions.
Regarding IGTC plans for the cold season, Jamshidi Dana said: "A priority of the company is to ensure that the supply to households should not be hampered nor the pressure be reduced.”