Iran's energy sector review

Iran says it is preparing to commence 15 new phases of South Pars gas field in three years, while 5 phases of the giant field have become operational during the last two years. Iranian Oil Minister Bijan Namdar Zanganeh said on August 27 that Iran would overtake Qatar in South Pars by 2018. South Pars, a joint gas field between Iran and Qatar, holds about 10 percent of global conventional gas reserves. Qatar started the gas production from this field a decade earlier that Iran, while Iran hadn't commenced any new phases from 2009 to 2014. According to BP as well as Iran’s official statistics, the country’s sweet gas output reached about 173 billion cubic meters (bcm) to 178 bcm during last year, of which about 110 bcm was produced in South Pars. However, Qatar, whose gas production relies on South Pars (North Field), produced 178 bcm of gas during last year. Thus, Iran needs to increase its gas production by about 80 bcm per annum (bcm/a) from South Pars to surpass Qat

Despite significant power production growth, Iran's electricity export plunged in 2015. The reason is soaring domestic consumption, but during the post-sanctions era, it's expected the country's industrial sector will revive and the power needs will increase by 20 to 25 percent in this sphere. According to the latest weekly report, released by the energy ministry, Iran has exported 4 billion kWhs of electricity from March 21 to August 8, while the figure for January 1 to March 20 was 2.2 billion kWhs. Therefore Iran's power export in 2015 stood at 6.2 billion kWhs, about 15 percent less than 2014. On the other hand, the country's electricity import increased by above 10 percent to 2.4 billion kWhs in 2015. According to official statistics, Iran's power generation capacity increased by 558 MWs and additional 1,734 MWs of power would add to the total capacity by the end of current fiscal year, (March 20, 2016) the power generation capacity would reach ab