Iran is facing a gas crisis threatens economic paralysis

Iran that has the second largest gas reserves and classified as the third largest producer in the world, is no longer hides that it’s facing a problem in providing gas to the industrial sectors in light of the decline in temperatures and the worsening of its consumption at the national level.

In the latest developments regarding the gas crisis raging in Iran, the Iranian International television reported that the official in the National Iranian Gas Company, Muslim Rahmani, announced that 1,442 governmental and public organizations and institutions would be cut off due to the exacerbation of the cold crisis and high consumption.

ON Saturday, the television indicated that the gas distribution crisis has worsened in the past few weeks with the increase in consumption.

In a report published less than a month ago, under the title “Gas Cutoff Begins in Industrial Sectors,” Mardam Salari newspaper quoted Abbas Jabal Barzi, deputy head of the Industrial Committee at the Iran Chamber of Commerce, as saying that the flow of gas to steel plants in Iran has decreased to a third, which means that some industrial departments will stop working.

While the Sunday Press news website mentioned that orders were issued to cut off gas from 10 petrochemical production complexes due to the increase in domestic consumption in the winter season, stressing that the arrow of the gas cut also affected some cement factories during the past days.

For his part, the Iranian researcher in energy affairs, Askar Sarmast, believes that the energy deficit, especially the lack of gas in the winter and the lack of electricity in the summer, isn’t new to his country, because domestic consumption accounts for the lion’s share in the consumption basket, which requires plans to rationalize consumption.

The Iranian Oil Minister, Javad Auchi, had expected that the country would witness a shortage of about 230 to 250 million cubic meters of gas at the peak of consumption during the coming winter.

Reports indicated that Iran exports surplus gas and electricity to neighboring countries, and that it doesn’t suffer from a shortage except in specific seasons.

Tehran can overcome the problem of energy shortage by agreeing with its foreign customers to reduce the quantities exports in those seasons.

The Iranian gas and oil reserves sector needs investments to advance the country economically rather than its main obsession with managing household consumption, with low energy prices as one of the reasons behind the exacerbation of domestic consumption in the country.

Due to of the US sanctions that have been going on for years, the Iranian oil and gas sector has entered a phase of wear and tear, and has become in dire need of modernization, development and the introduction of modern technologies, which prompted the National Iranian Oil Company to sign a memorandum of understanding with the Russian Gazprom company to develop 3 Iranian gas fields and 6 others for oil in a deal worth of $40 billion.

The deal comes as part of a series of urgent solutions that Tehran is looking for to invest in the oil and gas sectors.

The Iranian oil minister warned that his country would become an importer of oil and gas products if it didn’t attract $240 billion over the next 8 years to invest in the oil and gas sectors, due to the decline in pressure in a number of fields and to maintain production capacity in other fields.

About 9 billion cubic meters of produced and refined natural gas is lost due to network erosion and rupture at the stage of transportation and distribution.