Iran Inaugurates Pipe to Curb Need for Turkmen Gas
Iran has inaugurated a 170-km pipeline to its northeast region to eventually curb its reliance on Turkmen gas, supplies of which were halted in January.
However, this Damghan-Sari pipe still requires a gas compressor station to be added, so has only flowed modest amounts of gas from the south.
The new 42-inch-diameter linking Damghan northwards to Sari, close to Iran's border with Turkmenistan near the inland Caspian Sea, has a nominal capacity of 14.5bn m3/yr; it was inaugurated August 1 in the presence of Iran's oil minister Bijan Namdar Zanganeh.
It has been built as a continuation of a 48-inch 'Second North East Pipeline' from eastern Tehran to Damghan city, with the objective that South Pars gas will be piped via the Igat-2 trunkline pipe from Asaluyeh on the Persian Gulf to Tehran and then northeast to Damghan.
Iran Gas Engineering and Development Company's head Hassan Montazer Torbati confirmed to NGW that South Pars will be the main source of gas for the Damghan-Sari pipe but added that, as yet, no compressor has been installed on the Damghan-Sari pipe.
He didn’t explain whether new gas compressors have been installed in Igat-2 or Tehran-Damghan to boost their transmission capacities, but the Iranian government has long planned to install such compressors in its Igat pipelines to boost South Pars flows to the populated north of the country.
Without such compressors, especially the one for the line to Sari, it's unclear how supplies can be boosted to serve the winter needs of northeast Iran, now they lack Turkmen supplies. Iran's oil ministry later told NGW that new compressors will be added on the Tehran-Damghan pipe by autumn 2017.
Iran increased gas output from South Pars by 25bn m3/yr in 2016 to 155bn m3/yr and plans the same growth amount for 2017.
Igat-2, which is connected not only to South Pars in the south of the country but also to other gasfields in central Iran, had eight compressor stations with 30bn m3/yr transit capacity in 2015, but no new information is available about its current capacity.
Before, Iran had defined a project to build an Igat-11, with 40bn m3/yr capacity at a cost of $4.3bn, to connect South Pars gas process plants at Asaluyeh to Damghan directly. But that pipe project has been delayed already for more than a decade and hasn’t started yet.
Northeast Iran’s gas production capacity is about 14bn m3/yr, about 12bn m3/yr less than its demand.
Turkmenistan halted gas exports to Iran in January 2017 due to Iran’s long-delayed $1.8bn debt. According to an official document, prepared by Iran's oil ministry and seen by NGW, Iran imported about 5.86bn m3 from Turkmenistan during 2016, compared to 9bn m3 in 2015.
Dalga Khatinoglu