The CEO of the National Iranian Gas Company (NIGC) says the country’s gas network has been expanded by 53,000 kilometers in the last three years.

Majid Chegeni said on Sunday that Iran has built more than 1,800 kilometers of new high-pressure gas pipelines since the outgoing government took office in August 2021.

Chegeni said the number of gas customers in Iran had increased by nearly a million in the past three years. He added that during the same period, about 50 new towns and 6,800 villages had also been connected to the country’s nationwide gas pipeline network.

Over the past three years, natural gas has become available for 24 new power plants and 21,000 industrial facilities across Iran, he said, adding that the NIGC has also built seven new pumping stations with 24 compressors to supply electricity to the country’s long-distance gas pipelines.

Iran is one of the four largest producers and consumers of natural gas in the world. During the cold winter months, the country feeds over 850 million cubic meters of natural gas into its nationwide network every day.

Total gas production in Iran is over 1 billion cubic meters per day, much of which comes from South Pars, the world’s largest gas field, located on the maritime border between Iran and Qatar in the Persian Gulf.

Chegeni’s remarks on Sunday came at a ceremony to inaugurate a 176-kilometer gas pipeline in eastern Iran, where the NIGC is carrying out projects to increase gas supplies to households and industries in the region.

According to a report on the Iranian Oil Ministry’s news website, the government spent 72 trillion rials ($124.1 million) on the pipeline connecting Dashtak in the Sistan region with Nehbandan in South Khorasan province.

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