“Household gas subscribers in the province were 2.2 million in 2012. Now it has surpassed 3.2 million,” Saeed Tavakoli was quoted as saying by IRNA.
He noted that the number of meters in industries reached 290,000 -- up 70% compared to 2012.
“The province accounts for 12% of the total gas consumption in Iran.”
According to the National Iranian Gas Company data, the fuel comprises 68% of the energy mix in the metropolis.
Close to 2,100 kilometers of pipelines have been laid in the eight years to expedite piped-gas supply to rural districts namely Sulqan and Kan districts, few kilometers northwest of Tehran.
Referring to the length of Iran's gas pipelines, he said it was 36,000 km in 2016 and expanded by 3,000 km in three years.
Regarding finished projects, Tavakoli said NIGC completed the Kahnouj-Jiroft transmission pipeline in Kerman Province and the Nehbandan-Sarbisheh pipeline in South Khorasan Province.
NIGC also laid a pipeline to connect South Pars Gas Field onshore refineries in Asalouyeh to the ninth Iran Gas Trunkline (IGAT-9), stretching 1,800 km from Asalouyeh in Bushehr Province to Bazargan district in northwest West Azarbaijan Province.
IGAT is a series of nine large diameter pipelines supplying gas from refineries in the south (Khuzestan and Bushehr provinces) to regions across the country.
“By 2025, the length of Iran’s gas pipelines should increase by another 9,000 km and the annual gas supply capacity is projected to reach 400 bcm from the present 240 bcm,” Tavakoli added.
The volume of leakage in gas pipelines is estimated at 13 mcm/d, or less than 2.5%.
Iran’s daily gas production capacity is 850 mcm. Output from SP account for over two-thirds -- 600 mcm/d -- of the total domestic demand.
SP Gas Field, which Iran shares with Qatar, covers an area of 9,700 square kilometers, 3,700 square kilometers of which (South Pars) are in Iran’s territorial waters.