Countdown to pressure drop.
The Natrezi government estimated the gas shortage this coming winter at about 430 million cubic meters per day during peak consumption days and announced the possibility of tensions in at least 11 districts, mainly in the northern and northeastern districts.
Part of this gap is due to the decline in production after last year's attacks on refineries in southern Fars, but the main part of it is the same chronic imbalance that Iran's economy faced before the war.
Studies show that solutions such as reducing the temperature of houses by one degree (which results in savings of about 25 million cubic meters) alone cannot be the answer to this amount of imbalance and inevitably part of the burden of the crisis will be managed through the supply of liquid fuel to power plants, restrictions on industries or a drop in pressure in the network.
In districts like Mazandaran, where the share of the household sector is high and large industry is less, the risk of grid pressure approaching households is higher.
Also, the gap between the high value of gas in the market and its mandated price in the household sector does not create enough of an economic incentive to save.
Although the use of diesel reserves and grid pressure management can curb short cold waves, these measures simply shift costs from one sector to another, and until structural and energy efficiency imbalances are corrected, the challenge of gas shortages will continue every winter.
Full text.
The official channel of Donya Akhtaz newspaper.