Iraq to become gas self sufficient by 2025, says oil minister

Iraq is seeking to invest in gas extraction from the Western Desert, with the aim to reach self-sufficiency by 2025, the Iraqi oil minister announced yesterday.

Ihsan Abdul Jabbar said that Iraq was continuing to “increase its capabilities to export liquefied petroleum gas, and accelerate programmes to use gas in electric power production instead of liquid fuel.”

“Gas from the field would be consumed in Iraq and help the country use less oil to produce electricity,” Jabbar said during the sixth summit of the Gas Exporting Countries Forum in the Qatari capital Doha, stressing that natural gas was a “cleaner-burning source of fuel for electricity production.”

Iraq produces a total of 2.7 billion cubic feet of natural gas a day, according to official data. The country was said to have had a stockpile of 132 trillion cubic feet of gas, 700 billion of which were burnt due to lack of exploitation capabilities. It still imports gas from Iran, through two pipelines, at a rate of about 20 million cubic feet per day, to operate the country’s electric power plants.

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