Natual gas hasn’t lessen Iran’s air pollution plague
Natural gas, known as clean fossil fuel, shares about 70 percent of the Iran's total energy consumption basket, while about 3 million vehicles in Iran consumes liquid gas, the most in the world. However, Iran's air is one of the most polluted, and ranked 12th (with 127 mg per cm in 2010) with four Iranian cities among the ten most polluted areas in the world, according to the World Health Organization, a United Nation's body. The conditions have even worsened since 2010. Iran uses about 1.6 billon of oil equivalent energy per year, of which natural gas shares 1.132 billion barrels of oil equivalent. Iran's marketed natural gas production is about 180 billion cubic meters annually. Now, Iran's oil minister Bijan Namdar Zanganeh says 87 percent of the country's total population is supplied with natural gas, while more than 200 CNG stations are operating across the country, supplying about 20 million cubic meters of gas to over 3 million cars per day.