Addressing a remotely participated-in ceremony on Thursday to launch several national projects in the presence of Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, Mr. Zangeneh said his ministry had been able to increase the number of villages covered by the gas supply network by a factor of 2.5 from 14,000 in 2013 to 35,000 villages in 2021.

"Without implementation of gas consumption optimization plans, especially in thermal power plant, we will not be able to maintain the balance between gas production and consumption in the future because we have no other South Pars gas field to tap," he said.

He said that with the measures taken, the coverage of gas supply in the whole country has now reached 95.1%, which is a unique figure in the world, adding that so far gas has been supplied to more than 20,000 villages with more than 1,770,000 households and 194 cities with about 650,000 households.

"Currently, 98.4% of the urban population and 84.6% of the rural population and in total, more than 95% of the total population of the country enjoys the benefits of natural gas, while in 2013, 95% of the urban population and 54% of the rural population, and a total of 85% of the population were covered by the gas supply network.”

The Minister of Petroleum continued: "Since March 2014, more than 58 billion liters of liquid products worth more than 26 billion dollars have been made available as the export of petroleum products in 2020 had more than quadrupled compared to 2013."