Azernews.Az

Iran has launched new plans to boost its natural gas refining capacity and enhance efficiency of gas refineries, Mehr news agency quoted managing director of Iran's Gas Engineering and Development Company Alireza Gharibi as saying.

Ten projects are underway for boosting production and expanding infrastructures at gas refineries nationwide, Gharibi added.

For instance the gas refining capacity will be boosted at the Ilam and the Hasheminejad facilities by three million cubic meters and 13 million cubic meters per day respectively.

In December 2012, Iran's Oil Minister Rostam Qasemi said Iran has the capacity to produce four million barrels of crude and 600 million cubic meters of gas per day, Press TV reported.

Referring to the fact that Iran possesses 12 per cent of the world's oil reserves and 18 per cent of its gas reserves, Qasemi said that, "the capacity to produce oil must reach 5.2 million barrels and gas production capacity must hit one billion cubic meters per day by the end of the fifth Five-Year Development Plan (March 2016)".

Daily gas production in Iran is about 600 million cubic meters and this is projected to increase to 1.2 billion cubic meters in the future.

Iran, with 155 billion barrels of recoverable oil reserves, ranks fourth worldwide after Venezuela, Saudi Arabia, and Canada.

With 34 trillion cubic meters of natural gas reserves, Iran has the world's second largest natural gas reserves after Russia.