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Iran Air chief Farzaneh Sharafbafi was quoted by Press TV as saying that she expected the new turboprop planes to help further increase the capabilities of her airline.  

Sharafbafi emphasized that her airline needed to implement rapid changes to retain the position that it had at home and in the region.

The new planes will be part of 20 ATR 72-600s which Iran Air signed with the Franco-Italian aircraft manufacturer early this year as part of the Iranian flag carrier’s bid to rebuild its fleet after years of sanctions.

Iran took delivery of the first four ATR aircraft in May, with the rest due to be handed over to the country by the end of 2018, including a total of five this year.   

The planes will be operating among regional cities as part of a commercial plan, covering a populous crescent straddling Iran’s northwest and northeast.

Iran’s aviation officials had already said the ATR fleet may be based in the Caspian city of Rasht to connect small towns to big cities such as Tabriz and Mashhad in Iran and the Azerbaijani capital of Baku.

Iran Air’s deal with ATR includes options for a further 20 aircraft and a training program for Iranian pilots and engineers.

Iran is also renovating its aging fleet for international or long-distance flights under deals signed with Airbus and Boeing to buy a total of 180 passenger jets.

The country has so far received three Airbus jets and will get another by end-year. The first Boeing is due around May 2018.

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Iran’s gas exports have recently witnessed a major surge after the country increased its gas output from the South Pars field by 25 billion cubic meters in the second half of the last fiscal year.

According to Jamshidi Dana, Iran’s gas supply to the domestic power plants in the five-month period also increased by five percent to stand at 33 billion cubic meters.

Meanwhile, Iranian industrial sector saw an increase of 3.5 percent in its gas input, receiving 15 billion cubic meters of gas in the mentioned period.

The supplies of the South Pars Gas Complex (SPGC) in the five-month period also increased by 16 percent reaching 54 billion cubic meters. According to Masoud Hassani, the head of SPGC, the South Pars gas field accounted for 65 percent of the gas consumed in the country in this period.

Iran refined about 205 billion cubic meters of gas over the last fiscal year. The country’s gas imports over the last year stood at six billion cubic meters and its exports hit nine billion cubic meters.

While the output of South Pars increased by 25 billion cubic meters over the last fiscal year compared to the preceding year to reach 155 billion cubic meters, second half of the year accounted for the lion’s share of the huge surge in production level.

Back on April 16, President Hassan Rouhani inaugurated $20 billion worth of energy projects in the city of Asalouyeh in Bushehr Province, bringing five phases of the South Pars gas field, four petrochemical projects, as well as the South Pars oil layer on stream.

South Pars is part of a huge offshore field, shared with Qatar in the Persian Gulf. The field is estimated to hold about 8 percent of the world’s natural gas reserves.

The country also considerably increased the amount of its gas supply to power plants and large industrial units in the five-month period.

Iraq and Turkey are among the major gas customers of Iran. The Islamic Republic earlier on June 22 launched the export of seven million cubic meters of gas per day to the Arab country.

Iran and Iraq had earlier concluded two agreements on exporting gas. The first agreement envisages gas export to Baghdad and the second one offers Iran to export gas to Iraqi city of Basra through a pipeline crossing Shalamcheh. Iran’s gas is expected to be used in power generation in Iraq.

Turkey’s gas imports from Iran in the first half of 2017 increased by 23 percent, hitting 4.7 billion cubic meters.

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