TEHRAN - The volume of natural gas stored in Iran’s storage facilities since the beginning of the current Iranian calendar year (March 20) has 2.87 billion cubic meters (bcm), the managing director of Iranian Central Oil Fields Company (ICOFC) said.

“This year, 1.856 million cubic meters of gas has been injected into Shourijeh storage, while 1.014 billion cubic meters has also been injected into Sarajeh storage, which is a new record,” Shana quoted Ramin Hatami as saying.

According to the official, the volume in the current year has increased 28 percent compared to the same period last year, which is an indication of the company’s capability for sustained supply of natural gas to the north and northeastern provinces during the cold season.

Sustainable energy supply in the north and northeast regions which are significantly far from the main centers of gas production in the south of the country and the need to reduce dependence on gas imports has always been one of the main concerns of ICOFC as the only gas producer in these areas.

Meanwhile, the development and expansion of the national gas network and increasing gas consumption in the country has doubled the importance of storage facilities, according to Hatami.

Last year, 869 million cubic meters (mcm) of gas was stored in Sarajeh facility, and during the current year, this figure has reached 1014 mcm, which is a record since the beginning of storage in this facility, the official said.

With the addition of about 150 million cubic meters of gas to this storage facility, its reproduction capacity is expected to reach more than one billion cubic meters in the current year, Hatami added.

Iran has two major natural gas storage facilities in Sarajeh and Shourijeh, in which every year the National Iranian Gas Company (NIGC) stores the gas received from gas refineries all over the country to be used in the colder months of the year.

As the first natural gas storage facility in Iran and West Asia, Sarajeh storage facility was officially inaugurated in January 2014 near Qom, 124km south of Tehran.

Back in November 2019, NIGC awarded the development project of the Shourijeh gas storage facility in the northeastern Khorasan Razavi Province to an Iranian company based on a build-operate-transfer (BOT) contract.

As one of the world’s top gas producers, Iran is planning to expand its underground natural gas storage capacity to ensure that enough natural gas is available during peak demand periods to avoid electricity supply shortfalls in the future.

According to NIGC plans, the capacity of the two storage facilities, Sarajeh and Shourijeh, is planned to be increased to over seven bcm in near future.

EF/MA