Iran's NIGC aims to cut gas waste from heaters

OREANDA-NEWS. June 09, 2015. Iranian state-owned gas producer NIGC is hoping to curb high gas consumption in Iran through replacing consumer heating equipment with more efficient machines, the company said today.

Many Iranian heaters and boilers have high levels of gas wastage, which contribute to the country's large levels of gas consumption. Iran consumed 162.2bn m? in 2013 compared with only 85bn m? in 2003.

"We have to work on our devices and equipment to change this kind of low efficiency to the high one. We arranged this programme to persuade our domestic customers to change their systems to efficient ones, and NIGC pays a sort of subsidy to the customers," NIGC said. The company was speaking with Argus at the World Gas Conference in Paris, France.

The programme allows Iranian citizens to swap low-efficiency heaters for efficient ones at banks. The swap is partly subsidised by NIGC.

"We hope to change 50pc of low-efficiency heaters to high-efficiency ones within five years," the company said.

Iran's gas trade balance turned positive in 2014, but optimising the country's resources is necessary if it wants to build a more extensive export market. In 2014, Iranian gas exports totalled 9.75bn m? and imports were 6.33bn m?.

The country is also slowly decreasing its gas subsidies, which have kept domestic gas prices very low.

In addition to developing more efficient gas consumption programmes, the country is also focusing on developing its gas market to supply rural areas with better access to gas.

"We have three pilot projects in small-scale. We gain natural gas from the main pipeline, we change it into LNG and transport it into the villages. In the villages, we produce and build the networks again," NIGC said.

Iran's gas production was about 600mn m?/d in the 2014-15 Iranian year, up by 20pc from the previous year.