Iran's energy sector review

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani’s visit to Kazakhstan on December 22 ended without any energy deal. A source in Iran’s Oil Ministry told Trend that “no talks were scheduled to be held about oil and gas issues with Kazakhstan”. However, several major energy projects have been negotiated between two Caspian littoral nations in the last several months: refinery and power plant construction projects as well as oil swap. Of course, Rouhani said in Kazakhstan that both Iran and Kazakhstan are oil and gas exporters and can cooperate in this sector. “We can receive Kazakh oil in Caspian Sea and deliver the same amount of oil to Persian Gulf,” Iranian president said Dec. 22. Oil swap Iran is preparing to resume oil swap with Caspian littoral states. The capacity of storage facilities in Iran's Neka port on the Caspian shore is being increased to about 2.5 million barrels per day (mb/d), director of Iran's North Oil Terminal Hamid Reza Shahdoust said previously. Current

Only 15 percent of Iran’s household are well-optimized based on energy standards and the rest of them are losing $5 billion worth of energy annually, Mohammad Shekarchizadeh, head of Road , Housing and Development Research Center said Dec.19. His statement came, while Iranian government has defined a $2 billion worth energy package to prevent energy lose in housing sector since 2013, but the plan hasn’t realized yet. Iran needs to attract $2 billion to optimize 600,000 engine rooms. About 80 percent of Iran's households use heaters, while the others use central heating system in apartments. About 20 million heaters are active in Iran, consuming 1500 cubic meters each on average annually. Currently, engine rooms waste 50 percent of energy they receive. The housing sector consumes 91 billion cubic meters per year gas as well as 70.5 billion kWh of electricity annually. Beside 20 million heaters, about 2.2 million households use central heating systems. About 1 million hous

Two months after Iran announced that “importing gas from Turkmenistan is no longer a necessity and urgency”, Iran is now alarmed that its northern neighbour would use gas as a leverage of pressure in winter when the country’s gas demand is on peak point. Turkmenistan claims Iran has a $2 billion debt over gas import, delayed since the international sanctions on Iran were commenced in 2012. Fars news agency has quoted an Iranian official as saying on conditions anonymity that if Turkmenistan continues to threaten Iran with stopping gas deliveries in winter, Tehran would cancel gas deal with Ashgabat. The official said that in case Turkmenistan claims debt against Iran, it should appeal to an international court. During last decade, Turkmenistan halved gas deliveries to Iran, but shortly after negotiations it resumed gas export again. Besides China, Iran is the only buyer of Turkmen gas, as Russia stopped gas intake from Ashgabat in early 2016. Over the past Iranian year (