Iran, holder of the world’s biggest natural gas reserves, boosted output by inaugurating six projects at the giant South Pars offshore field.
The country raised total production capacity at South Pars to 570 million cubic meters a day of gas, putting it almost on par with neighboring Qatar, which produces from an adjacent portion of the same deposit, Oil Minister Bijan Namdar Zanganeh said Sunday at a ceremony in the port city of Assaluyeh. Iran invested $20 billion to complete the six projects, or phases, President Hassan Rouhani said at the event.
Iran is on track to out-produce Qatar, the world’s biggest exporter of liquefied natural gas, at the Persian Gulf deposit. Iranian officials want to gain market share for gas shipments and attract foreign investment, even as U.S. President Donald Trump ratchets up confrontational rhetoric against Iran.
Even so, Iranians won’t have much gas to export because they are likely to use most of the new production themselves. Half of Iran’s gas goes to warming homes, with the rest used mostly to generate power and for industrial use. New production can barely keep up with domestic demand, and consumption almost doubled to 191.2 billion cubic meters in 2015 from 102.7 billion in 2005, according to BP Plc statistics.
bloomberg.com
