Greater Caspian Region Weekly Overview - August 16th
Iran
Iran funds $1.2 B to connect 19,000 industrial units
National Iranian Gas Company approved a $1.2 billion budget to connect about 19,000 industrial units to national gas grid in 3 years.
Mojtaba Sheikh Bahaei, the deputy head of the NIGC said on August 16th that currently some 73,000 industrial units have been linked to national gas grid.
He also said that 90 percent of Iranian citizens also reach natural gas and NIGC planned to increase this percentage to 100 percent by 2018.
An advisor of Iran’s Oil Minister stated on August 5th that Iran planned to add more two million households to gas network in three years.
Some 19 million Iranian households access gas, while Iran announced that some $2 billion will be allocated to construct new pipelines to supply remaining households with natural gas.
Iran supports 5.878 million households in villages with gas and 3.731 million households will be connected to gas network.
Some 18.863 million households in cities also reach gas, while 768,000 households would get gas in three years.
For full support of all Iranian households with gas, some $4.8 billion in investments is needed.
India keen to import LNG from Iran
With the prospect of lifting of economic sanctions on Iran, India has expressed interest in buying liquefied natural gas (LNG) from the Persian Gulf nation, Oil Minister Dharmendra Pradhan said on August 12th.
Indian state firms had on June 13, 2005 signed a Sale and Purchase Agreement (SPA) with National Iranian Gas Export Company (NIGEC) for buying 5 million tons a year of LNG on a long-term contract at very attractive price of USD 3.215 per million British thermal units.
Iran doesn’t have any LNG plants, but it is preparing to resume LNG projects soon, especially a 10-MT/a “Iran LNG” project.
Iran to launch 3 new gas refineries
Iran is preparing to commence three gas refineries of phases 7, 8 and 9 of South Pars by March 2016.
Managing Director of the South Pars Gas Complex, Masoud Hasani, said on August 12th that South Pars currently shares 54 percent of the country’s refined gas needs, but after commencing the mentioned refineries, this figure would reach 75 percent.
Iran’s South Pars gas field shares about 72 percent of total raw gas production. During the past year, Iran added 100 mcm/d of raw gas to South Pars gas production levels and the same volume is expected to be added by March 2016.
Iran’s raw and refined gas production stood at about 220 bcm and 178 bcm respectively in 2014.
Azerbaijan
Azerbaijan increased gas export
Azerbaijan’s gas export reached 5.226 billion cubic meters (bcm) during the first seven months of 2015, while this figure was 4.858 during the same period in the last year, State Custom reported.
According to the report, some 907 million cubic meters of the mentioned volume exported by SOCAR. Therefore, the remaining volume belongs to Shah Deniz Stage 1, operated by BP plc.
A source in State Oil Fund told Natural Gas Europe that Azerbaijan’s exported gas to Turkey dropped by 25 percent in value. Turkey imports gas from Shah Deniz. Another source told Natural Gas Europe that Turkey has increased gas imports from Azerbaijan to 18 mcm/d in current year.
Shah Deniz gas output increases by 9.5%
Azerbaijan’s Shah Deniz gas field output increased by 9.5 percent to 5.2 bcm during first half of 2015 (1H15), BP plc reported.
The increase at Shah Deniz stage 1 (SD1) occurred as a report published by the State Oil Company of Azerbaijan Republic (SOCAR) last week, indicated that the country’s total gas production decreased by 0.711 bcm to 14.68 bcm in the first half of 2015. This volume includes also the re-injected and flaring gas.
SOCAR’s report said that this company’s own gas production decreased by 0.448 bcm to 3.373 bcm.
BP also reported that the amount of delivered associated gas from Azeri-Chirag-Deepwater Gunashli (ACG) to Azerbaijan in six months was 2.1 bcm.
By comparing the SOCAR and BP’s statistics, Azerbaijan produced 10.673 bcm of commercial gas in 1H15 in total and the remaining volume (4 bcm) of gas has been re-injected to oil wells.
Turkmenistan
Development of the largest natural gas field in Turkmenistan, Galkynysh, continues, the newspaper Neutral Turkmenistan said.
More than 20 production wells have been drilled during the preparation for the launch of refining capacities in the central part of the oil and gas area of the field, the newspaper said.
In 2014, the departments of Turkmenraz completed construction of three production wells with a depth of over 4,500 meters with a total flow rate of more than 6.5 million cubic meters of natural gas per day, Trend reported.
Teams of the “Turkmengeologiya” State Corporation commissioned three more wells.
This year, geologists plan to drill another four deep wells with high flow rate of gas on the field, the article said.
Using the experience of foreign companies to introduce advanced technologies and render services with respect to mining and geological conditions of the Galkynysh field made it possible to significantly improve the quality and efficiency of drilling operations and cope with the plans for commissioning of gas wells.
In addition, manufacturing operations in drilling conducted jointly with foreign companies contribute to further training of Turkmen specialists, the newspaper said.
The country’s largest fields are concentrated in the Mary province in the country’s east.
Under the program for development of the country’s oil and gas industry, it is planned to increase the gas production volume to 230 billion cubic meters by 2030.
It was earlier reported that over 76 billion cubic meters of natural gas was produced in Turkmenistan in 2014 and more than 45 billion cubic meters of this volume was sent for export.