TEHRAN - National Iranian Gas Company (NIGC) Dispatching Director Mohammadreza Jolaei has said NIGC is currently supplying 175 million cubic meters (mcm) of natural gas to the country’s power plants on a daily basis despite the surge in domestic consumption.

Mentioning the recent surges in the country’s domestic gas consumption, Jolaei said: “the new wave of cold wheatear in the country has caused an increase in the gas consumption by the domestic sector.”

“Gas consumption in the domestic and commercial sectors has now reached 500 million cubic meters per day,” the official told IRNA.

Every year, the increase in gas consumption by households in winter causes less gas to be supplied to power plants, and if liquid fuel storages are not full, power plants will face problems operating on full capacity.

Back in August, Meysam Jafarzadeh, the director-general of the Crisis Management Office in the Iranian Energy Ministry, had stressed the need for taking necessary measures to ensure sustained supply of fuel to the country’s power plants during the cold season.

In late November, Oil Minister Javad Oji put the consumption of natural gas by Iranian domestic and commercial sectors at 517 mcm saying it was 22-percent more than the previous year’s same month.

Speaking to the national TV, Oji noted that the ministry had been forced to limit gas supply to some industries including cement and petrochemical production units in order to compensate for the gap between production and demand.

Earlier that month, the Head of the National Iranian Gas Company (NIGC)’s Production Coordination and Supervision Management Ahmad Zamani also said that the consumption of natural gas in the country had exceeded the current production levels.

Zamani had called on various sectors to manage their consumption during the cold season’s peak consumption period.

EF/