TEHRAN - The volume of natural gas stored in Iran’s Shourijeh storage since the beginning of the current Iranian calendar year (March 20) has reached 1.885 billion cubic meters (bcm), registering a 22-percent rise compared to the same period last year, a gas official said on Wednesday.

According to Yahya Feizi, this volume of gas is enough for a sustained supply of gas to the northeastern provinces during the cold season, IRNA reported.

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.

Back in November 2019, NIGC awarded the development project of 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 increase to over seven billion cubic meters in near future.

Back in November, the managing director of Iranian Central Oil Fields Company (ICOFC) announced that the volume of natural gas stored in Iran’s storage facilities reached 2.87 bcm.

“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.

EF/MA