TEHRAN - The Iranian petroleum ministry has awarded over half a billion U.S. dollar worth of flare gas projects to domestic companies as part of efforts to reach a zero flares target by 2025.
A Thursday report by the official IRNA news agency said that the contracts will be worth 470 million euros ($520 million) and will reduce the gas flared from the Iranian oilfields by 600 million cubic feet (nearly 17 million cubic meters) by 2024.
The eight contracts are part of an investment package of $1.22 billion introduced by the Iranian government in 2018 to recover flare gas from oilfields in southwestern Iran.
The government had already awarded $288 million of those projects to local contractors, according to officials in the Bid Boland Refinery, a facility especially designed to process the recovered flare gas for use in petrochemicals or industrial plants in the region.
Petroleum Minister Javad Owji, who supervised the signing of the contracts on Thursday, vowed that Iran will reach a zero flare target at the end of the current administrative government in 2025.
Owji estimated that around 40 million cubic meters (1.4 billion cubic feet) per day of natural gas is currently flared or vented in oilfields in Iran.
“I can assure you that around 500 million cubic feet of flare gas will be recovered and used as feedstock at petrochemical complexes within the next one or two years,” the minister was quoted as saying by the state TV.
Iran has introduced various development projects in its massive petroleum sector despite being subject to a harsh regime of American sanctions since 2018.