Iran's planned LNG facilities to supply gas to regions away from gas sources
Iran plans to build several mini liquefied natural gas production units, an official of the National Iranian Gas Company said on Wednesday.
The measure aims at transporting gas to the provinces which are far from gas sources, Saeed Pakseresht was quoted by IRNA news agency as saying.
Constructing mini LNG units in numerous provinces will reduce Iran's costs to transport gas to all parts of the country, he explained.
The northern province of Mazandaran, the western province of Kermanshah and the south-western province of Ilam are the three possible locations for constructing the first unit, Pakseresht said. He noted that the Ilam province will be more likely to be chosen.
Iran's first mini LNG production unit will have the capacity to produce 150 tons of gas per day, he said.
In the fourth five-year National Develop Plan (2005-2009), the
country aimed to produce 70 million tons of LNG from the South
Pars, North Pars, Ferdosi and Golshan gas fields by launching six
LNG production facilities.
After cancelling LNG contracts with French Total, Spanish Repsol,
Dutch-British company Shell and Malaysian Petronas prior to 2008,
Iran essentially lost as much as 27 million tons of its LNG
production capacity.
Afterwards, in 2008, Iran signed $25 billion worth of contracts to develop its gas fields and produce LNG with the Chinese SINOC group, Chinese CEPA, Polish state-owned gas company PGNiG and Malaysian Petrofield LNG Co.
The value of Iran's contracts with PGNiG and Petrofield were about $2 billion and $14-16 billion respectively. Currently all these contracts are suspended.