Iran said on Saturday the latest official figures show it still has the world’s second largest conventional reserves of natural gas.
The National Iranian Gas Company (NIGC) in an announcement said the recoverable reserves of natural gas in Iran have increased to above 34 trillion cubic meters (tcm).
NIGC said this is about 1.4 tcm more than the reserves of Russia. The figure, which the company said had been provided by BP in its 2015 Statistical Review of World Energy, puts Iran ahead of Russia whose reserves stand at about 32.6 tcm for a second consecutive year.
Based on the BP report, Qatar with 24.5 tcm follows Iran and Russian in the third place in terms of collective gas reserves.
The report further adds that Iran’s gas production saw an increase of 5.2 percent in 2014 to reach a total of 172.6 bcm.
Iran is presently the world’s fourth largest producer of natural gas after the United States (758 bcm), Russia (578 bcm), and Qatar (177 bcm).
Iran’s exports of natural gas in 2014 stood at a total of 9.6 bcm of which about 8.9 bcm were exported to Turkey and some 0.7 bcm were delivered to Armenia and the Nakhchivan Republic through a gas-for-electricity swap scheme, NIGC added quoting BP figures.
Also, Iran’s imports for 2014 stood at 6.9 bcm from Turkmenistan and about 0.3 bcm from Azerbaijan.