Iran's energy sector review

The latest stats released by Iran's Energy Ministry indicate a huge change in power plants’ fuel feeds, while the output level increased significantly during last four months. According to the ministry’s weekly report, Iran's electricity output reached about 104 billion kWh in first four months and two days (126 days) of current fiscal year, while this figure was 101.5 billion kWh in the same period of last year (March 21 to July 24). On the other hand, during this period, the country's power production capacity increased by 373 MW (two 160-MW hydropower plants + 53-MW gas power plant). Iran planned to increase the current 73,525 MW power production capacity to 75,284 MW by the end of fiscal year (March 20, 2016). Despite these figures, the country's actual power production capacity stands at 57,759 MW. Iran’s electricity export fell by 17 percent to 3.336 billion kWh, while imports rose by 17 percent to 1.503 billion kWh in last four months. The country in

When we talk about the importance of Iran in global energy security, its oil export is featured most often, but the volume and value of Iranian gas is even more than oil. Iran ranks forth in term of its 158 billion barrels of oil reserves, but first in term of 34 trillion cubic meters of gas reserves, which equals 240 billion barrels of oil equivalent. Iran produces 180 billion cubic meters of gas per annum (bcm/a), while it's oil output capacity is about one billion barrels. Domestically, Iran consumes 175 bcm/a of refined gas, which shares 67 percent of the country's total primary energy usage, while the figure for the consumed 600 million barrels of crude oil is about 25 percent. Iran planned to double gas output to 1.2 bcm per day (bcm/d) by 2018. Though this plan is so ambitious to be realized in the mentioned time, it doesn't undermine the perspective of country's upstream gas sector. Currently, Iran still faces a gas shortage despite a 100-mcm/d in