Iran's energy sector review

Iran's condensate export declined to below 0.2 million barrels per day during last month, indicating the lowest level since Iran reached an agreement with the P5+1 group, regarding its nuclear program. Iran's state IRNA Agency cited the Custom Administration that the country's total gas condensate exports during first half of current fiscal year (From March 21 to September 22) have reached 9, 233 thousand metric tons. The total condensate export during H1 of Iran's fiscal year experienced a 85 percent increase, compared to the same period during the previous year, according to IRNA. However, with comparing the volume of the last month with previous months since October 2013, the figure is the lowest. The figures are extracted from Iranian Custom Administration's monthly reports: Condensate export Volume Kilo metric tons Value Thousand barrels per day Oct 23 to Nov 22 1,149 $1.018B 311.34 Nov 23 to Dec 22 1,690 $1.419B 457.94 De...

Below is an article, exclusively written by Dalga Khatinoglu, the head of Trend Agency's Iran News Service for Iranian Oil Ministry's news website  Shana . While the global primary energy consumption increased by 27 percent during the last decade, Iran's energy usage rose by 80 percent. Iran's energy consumption, which also experienced a significant increase since 2001, reached 1.6 billion barrel of crude oil equivalent (OE) in 2013, about 141 million more than the previous year. Despite Iran's runaway energy consumption rate, the composition of the country's energy basket is satisfying. The share of natural gas in the country's primary energy consumption is 70 percent, while this figure in 1980 was only 10.6 percent (20 million barrels OE). According to the National Iranian Oil Refining & Distribution Company's statistics, the gas consumption level has increased 50 fold since 1980. The indicator in 2012 was 66.5 percent (1 billion ...

Officials of the administration of former Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad published contradictory statistics about the gold reserve of Iranian Central Bank (CBI). According to the statistics, the actual reserve was 5-6 times smaller than the stated reserves. In September 2010, former CBI governor Mahmoud Bahmani announced that the country had embarked on buying gold as the rise of global gold prices was anticipated. At the same time, he said Iran had enough of gold reserve for 15 years. Although he did not refer to any specific figure about the gold reserve at the CBI, but said that the country’s annual gold consumption was 30-35 tons, meaning that the CBI gold reserve was about 450 tons. However, a year later, Bahmani told IRNA that the CBI gold reserve was 500 tons. In 2007, gold was traded at $650 per ounce and the price rose to $1870 in 2011. After the Ahmadinejad administration’s incumbency, the CBI put the country’s gold reserve at just 95 tons in 2011. Prese...

Iran's gas condensate export during last month dropped by 260 percent to 205,000 barrels per day compared to the previous month. According to the Custom Administration's monthly report published on Sept.2, Iran sold 1,965 thousand tons of gas condensate two months ago, but this figure fell to 759 thousand tons last month. Iran's fiscal year started on March 21. Each of the first five months of Iran's fiscal year consists of 31-days. Iran categorizes the gas condensate as a non-oil commodity, sharing 29.82 percent of the country's total non-oil exports in value. However, if the condensate is recognized as ultra-light crude oil, then it shares about one third of Iran's total crude exports. Before the West's sanctions imposed in mid-2012 on Iran's oil exports, the country's condensate exports amounted to 265,000 barrels per day, but decreased to 195,000 barrels on average a year later. However, after Iran and the Six Powers' interim n...

By Dalga Khatinoglu Iran with 1,190 trillion cubic feet of gas, as well as 157 billion barrels of oil reserves ranks second and forth as primary energy holder in the world, but due to huge consumption rates, it is suffering from energy shortage. Iran's upstream and downstream energy projects have faced long delays, cancellations or slow development due to the withdrawal of giant international companies as well as the lack of technology, financial might and mismanagement during last several years, while the primary energies consumption have grown at a fast pace. For instance Iran hasn't able to full commission any new oil and gas projects since 2007 and 2009 respectively. The Middle East country faced gas shortages last winter seriously. In addition to cutting the gas supply to power plants, which led to burning $30 billion of liquid fuels, the Iranian government had to decrease gas delivery to petrochemical plants from 1,236 million to 530 million cubic feet. T...

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. ...