TEHRAN – Iran Fuel Conservation Company (IFCC) has called for optimization of the consumption of energy carriers considering the country’s natural gas consumption has reached a record high in recent weeks, IRNA reported on Thursday.

According to the IFCC’s Manager of Buildings Energy Optimization Department, Kourosh Hashemi, the low prices of energy carriers in Iran are preventing the people from using equipment and appliances with optimized energy consumption.

“These low prices do not encourage the consumer to improve their consumption patterns and use new technologies and high-efficiency appliances,” Hashemi said.
Referring to the unprecedented record of daily consumption of natural gas in the domestic sector in January (about 600 million cubic meters per day), the official emphasized the need for energy optimization in buildings.

Iran’s daily natural gas consumption hit a record high of 592 million cubic meters (mcm) a day in early January due to the heavy snowfall and cold weather that blanketed the country.

In mid-January, the spokesman of the National Iranian Gas Company (NIGC) had also emphasized the need to pay more attention to the optimization of gas consumption, saying: “Although the domestic gas sector is fully supplied considering the increase in gas production in South Pars field as well as the development of the country's gas network, however, the increase in domestic consumption could interrupt the gas supply to the country’s industrial sector, power plants, and petrochemical plants.”

As reported, currently, about 30,000 villages with 4.6 million households as well as 1,148 cities with over 18 million households are connected to the national gas network; this is while the development of the gas network for the industrial sector and power plants continues.

In August 2019, NIGC Dispatching Director Mehdi Jamshidi Dana said the country’s daily gas production had reached 810 mcm.

According to Jamshidi, with over 39,000 kilometers of high-pressure gas pipelines, 82 gas pressure boosting stations, 296 turbo-compressors and other gas facilities, the Iranian gas network is Asia’s biggest and the world's fourth-largest network in terms of facilities.

EF/MA