Saeed Momeni added that if the plants do not settle their debts, NIGC will cut off their gas supply, Shana, the Oil Ministry’s official news agency, reported on Saturday.
Momeni noted that the administration is yet to take a decision on the issue.
According to the official, the CHP plants have not paid their gas bills pertaining to the fiscal 2016-17, which led to a temporary cutoff of their feedstock gas in October 2017, Financial Tribune reported.
“However, they were reconnected to the gas grid after a while to prevent the plants’ economic loss,” he added.
Cogeneration or combined heat and power is the use of a heat engine or power station to generate electricity and useful heat at the same time. Cogeneration is an efficient use of fuel. In conventional power plants, some energy is discarded as waste heat, but in cogeneration, most of this thermal energy is put to use. Momeni stressed that some of the indebted CHP plants have ballooned their debts by not paying the last fiscal’s gas bills. According to Shana, the plants’ debt to the NIGC stood at 750 billion rials ($8.3 million) in the last fiscal year (ended March 20, 2018).
Hamidreza Araqi, NIGC’s managing director, said in May that these plants have been haggling over gas price with the National Iranian Oil Company and NIGC, which finally yielded positive results. The official noted that there are still power stations that run on ecologically harmful fuels, especially mazut and diesel, with low efficiency.
“Delivering natural gas to plants is an effective measure to reduce their costs and boost effectiveness,” he said, adding that if financial constraints are removed, more gas ventures can be launched.