Islamic Republic of Iran plans to increase its share in global gas trade by launching five LNG projects over the next 3 years.

Managing director of the National Iranian Gas Company (NIGC) Hamidreza Araqi made the remarks during the International Gas Union’s (IGU) natural gas working group, adding currently Islamic Republic of Iran exports gas to three neighboring countries including Azerbaijan, Armenia and Turkey and will start natural gas exports to Iraq in near future.

According to the report of the public relations of the NIGC, he said that negotiations are underway for exports of natural gas to India, Oman, Kuwait, Turkey (2nd phase) and Iraq (2nd phase)as well.

Araqi noted that Iran is the world’s top gas reserves holder with 34 trillion cubic meters.

“Iran’s gas treatment capacity will hit as much as 330 billion cubic meters per annum by 2017 which in turn will raise the capacity for natural gas exports,” he stated.

NIGC has development of four gas storage projects on the agenda of which two projects have come online so far, NIGC official noted.

“The country produced 173 billion cubic meters of natural gas in 2014,” he said, adding Iran is currently the world's fourth largest producer of natural gas after the USA, Russia and Qatar.

It’s worth mentioning that Iran wants to increase its gas production capacity to 1200 MMcm/d by 2020.

“Also Iran with consumption of 173 billion cubic meters of natural gas in 2014 was the world’s fourth largest gas consumption after USA, Russia and China,” he added.

At the end Araqi mentioned that NIGC aims at ranking the third among natural gas producers in the world to achieve 8 to 10 percent of the global gas trade share. The second objective of NIGC is ranking the first in the region in terms of gas technology.

About NIGC

The National Iranian Gas Company (NIGC) was established in 1965 as one of the four principal companies affiliated to the Ministry of Petroleum of the Islamic Republic of Iran.