"The output indicates a hike of 9.3% compared with the corresponding period of 2016," Gholamreza Bahman-Nia was also quoted as saying by Shana.
The official added that the capacity of other byproducts, namely gas condensates, ethane and sulfur, also observed a year-on-year growth of 11%, 23% and 7.3%, respectively.
Bahman-Nia noted that enhancing the downstream sector is high on the Oil Ministry's agenda as it not only helps curb air pollution, but also raises the country's export of oil derivatives like mazut and diesel since power stations no longer rely on them as feedstock. Natural gas accounts for 70% of the country's energy basket. Iran holds 34 trillion cubic meters of natural gas reserves, the largest in the world ahead of Russia with 32.6 trillion cubic meters, according to BP estimates, according to Financial Tribune.
According to Saeed Momeni, the National Iranian Gas Company's director for gas supply, Iran's natural gas export via pipelines to neighboring states, namely Iraq, Turkey, Armenia and Azerbaijan's autonomous republic of Nakhchivan, has reached 43 million cubic meters per day.
"Iran produces about 850 million cubic meters of gas per day and based on the Sixth Five-Year Economic Development Plan (2017-22), the country's global export share should reach 10%," he said.
Giving a breakdown on gas export, Momeni added that just over 1 million cubic meters per day of natural gas are sold to Armenia, which uses it in power plants to generate electricity that is exported to Iran when demand peaks in summer.
"About 12 mcm/d of gas per day are currently transferred to Baghdad, making Iraq the second largest gas customer of Iran after Turkey, which imported about 21 mcm/d in 2016, according to the latest BP Statistical Review of World Energy," he said.
Basra, Iraq's second largest city, also needs Iranian gas to feed its power plant as part of efforts to reduce outages.
The official noted that the infrastructure to send gas to Basra has been established and fuel transfer is expected to commence soon.