Page 61 - IRANRptSep21

Iran reduces gas flows to Iraq
Iran ups electricity imports from Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan and Armenia amid heatwave outages
mathematical problems.
The electricity being used for crypto mining in Iran would require the equivalent of around 10mn barrels of crude oil each year to generate, equivalent to around 4% of total Iranian oil exports in 2020, according to the study.
Iran, delivering cheap power, has permitted a certain level of crypto mining in recent years. This has attracted crypto mining investors from countries including China, while unapproved operators have proliferated. All produced Bitcoins in Iran must be sold to the central bank. Cryptocurrencies mined in the country can legally be used to pay for imports of authorised goods.
Iran has reduced gas flows to power stations in southern and central Iraq as the Islamic Republic struggles with domestic power and water crises. A statement from Iraq’s Ministry of Energy (MoE) said that gas supplies had fallen by 19mn cubic metres per day.
“The rates of Iranian gas being supplied to the production stations in the central regions and Baghdad have been reduced from 34mn cubic metres to 20mn cubic metres per day,” it said, adding that supplies to southern regions had dropped from 17 mcm to 12 mcm per day.
The MoE noted that the country has lost around 1,000 MW of electricity output as a result.
Iraq is understood to be generating around 19,000-21,000 MW, far short of its required level of 30,000 MW. In addition to the cross-border gas flows, Iraq imports around 1,200 MW of electricity from Iran.
Exacerbating the situation, transmission lines in the Iraqi governorates of Diyala, Kirkuk and Salah ad Din have been targeted by attacks understood to have been carried out by Daesh militants.
The MoE said that “great and high co-ordination” had been held between the oil and energy ministries of the neighbours to compensate for the reduced volumes.
Iran has increased electricity imports from neighbouring Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan and Armenia amid its serious difficulties with summer power outages experienced during an ongoing heatwave, the Tehran Times reported the Iranian energy ministry as saying on July 11.
“Up to 650 megawatts of electricity is currently imported from Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan and Armenia,” the ministry’s spokesman for the electricity industry, Mostafa Rajabi Mashhadi, was cited as writing on his social media account. He noted that due to infrastructure limitations and high domestic demand in the three countries, electricity beyond 650 MW could not be sourced from the neighbours.
Earlier last week, Rajabi Mashhadi said that Iran had stopped electricity exports to neighbouring countries due to the surge in domestic demand. Only 50 MW of electricity was being exported to Afghanistan as things stood, he added, noting that Iran’s power plants were only able to generate 54,000 MW of electricity, or nearly 12,000 MW less than domestic power demand.
Amid the heatwave, daily electricity consumption in Iran reached 66,250 MW (66.25 GW) on July 5, registering a new record.
The figure was 8,000 MW more than consumption recorded in the previous year’s peak period.
Severe drought mean Iran is currently able to produce only a very small amount of hydropower.
61 IRAN Country Report September 2021 www.intellinews.com