Iran holds vast gas reserves yet faces a widening winter energy shortfall

Iran sits on one of the largest natural gas endowments on Earth, yet every winter the country struggles to keep homes and industries warm enough. A new quantitative assessment published in GeoEnergy Communications finds that Iran holds 32.3 trillion cubic meters of gas reserves, 17.3 percent of the world total, ranking second only to Russia, which possesses 38 trillion cubic meters and 20.3 percent of global reserves. Despite that abundance, the study documents a persistent mismatch between the gas Iran produces and the gas its population consumes, an imbalance severe enough in recent years to force temporary closures of government offices and production halts in industries.

The research team, led by Hamid Ganjaeian and colleagues, compiled official statistics from the Ministry of Petroleum of the Islamic Republic of Iran, the statistics platform Statista, and the websites of OPEC and OPEC Gas. They used SPSS for calculations and Expert Choice software to implement the Analytic Hierarchy Process, a multi-criteria decision-making method that structures complex choices into a hierarchy of criteria and alternatives. The authors note that because they drew on the most recent figures available from each source, the data correspond to different years, a limitation they acknowledge explicitly in the methodology section.

On production, the numbers place Iran in an elite group. In 2023 the country produced approximately 252 billion cubic meters of natural gas, about 6.3 percent of the roughly 3993 billion cubic meters extracted worldwide that year. Only the United States, with 1035 billion cubic meters or 25.9 percent of global output, and Russia, with 586 billion cubic meters or 14.7 percent, produced more. Qatar, Turkmenistan, and the United States follow Iran in the reserve rankings, holding 24.7, 19.5, and 13.2 trillion cubic meters respectively, equal to 13.2, 10.4, and 7.1 percent of the global total.

Consumption tells a different story. Iran burned through 246 billion cubic meters of gas in 2023, 6.2 percent of world consumption, ranking fourth behind the United States at 887 billion cubic meters, Russia at 453 billion, and China at 405 billion. On a per capita basis, Iran consumed 2894 cubic meters per person, a figure the authors describe as significantly above reasonable levels, particularly given that the country also holds substantial oil resources and enjoys an average temperature higher than that of European countries. Among the top gas-producing nations, only Qatar, at 16,296 cubic meters per person, Russia at 3150, and Saudi Arabia at 3081 consumed more per head. The authors caution that climate, area, and energy mix must be considered when comparing per capita figures across countries.

The sectoral breakdown reveals where the gas goes. Roughly half of Iran’s natural gas consumption, about 50 percent, is attributed to domestic use, with commercial and industrial sectors accounting for 29 percent and 20 percent respectively. Natural gas supplies more than 50 percent of Iran’s energy mix, a dependence far deeper than that of Russia, at 36 percent, or the United States, at 24 percent. Meanwhile, exports remain modest relative to the country’s endowment: Iran shipped about 19 billion cubic meters abroad in 2022, placing it only 15th among exporting nations, while the United States led with 195 billion cubic meters, followed by Russia with 176 billion and Qatar with 126 billion. Iran’s main customers are Turkey and Iraq, receiving roughly 10 and 12 billion cubic meters annually, figures that have fluctuated considerably, along with about 1 billion cubic meters bartered to Armenia for electricity and a swap arrangement with Turkmenistan.

The imbalance itself is structural, according to the study. A 2021 balance document approved by Iran’s Supreme Energy Council projected that even with planned efficiency measures, the country would face a seasonal gas deficit during cold months, one that grows over time. Iran’s energy intensity is approximately three times the global average, fifteen times higher than Japan’s, and ten times higher than Europe’s, indicating substantial waste across all sectors. A significant share of the loss occurs not at the point of final consumption but during production, transmission, and distribution. The authors attribute the widening supply-demand gap to infrastructural inefficiencies, unstable policymaking, low energy productivity, insufficient investment, financial constraints, and the impact of international sanctions, which have prevented power generation and gas production capacity from keeping pace with demand.

To identify remedies, the team first drew up seven candidate strategies through library research and expert consultation, then asked a panel of fifteen experts, five each in physical geography, human geography, and environmental management, drawn from academic institutions across Iran, to rank them through pairwise comparisons in the AHP framework. The consistency ratio of the comparison matrices came out at 0.04, below the 0.1 threshold that indicates acceptable consistency, and the final weights were reviewed and validated by all experts. The result was unambiguous: investment in renewable energy, particularly solar power, received the highest weight at 0.240, followed by education and awareness campaigns for optimal gas consumption at 0.197, and modernization of gas appliances and equipment in domestic, commercial, and industrial sectors at 0.161. Developing new gas fields, modernizing energy infrastructure, deploying advanced technologies from extraction to consumption, and reforming gas pricing rounded out the candidate list.

The emphasis on solar power rests on geography. Iran experiences more than 300 sunny days per year, and an analysis of sunshine hours at 31 synoptic stations in provincial centers, mapped using IDW interpolation, shows a general increase from west to east and from north to south. The southern half of the country, with more than 3000 sunshine hours annually, emerged as the region with the greatest solar potential. Wind resources were assessed using data from 56 meteorological stations, counting the number of days per year with wind speeds exceeding 6.2 meters per second. That mapping identified the southeastern and northwestern regions, along with parts of the central interior, as the areas with the highest wind energy potential. As of February 2024, Iran’s total installed renewable power capacity stood at 1560 megawatts, with solar accounting for 53 percent and wind 24 percent, concentrated in the provinces of Kerman, Qazvin, Yazd, Isfahan, and Razavi Khorasan, according to the country’s Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Organization.

The study also maps where Iran’s gas actually lies. The highest concentration of gas fields is in Bushehr Province, with significant fields also in Fars, Hormozgan, and Ilam, and additional fields in Qom, Kermanshah, Razavi Khorasan, Golestan, and the Caspian Sea. The largest is the South Pars field, which Iran shares with Qatar, where it is known as North Dome; it holds roughly one-third of Iran’s total reserves and is considered the largest gas field in the world, sitting 100 kilometers off the southern coast with 33 percent belonging to Iran and 67 percent to Qatar.

The findings arrive at a moment when Iran’s winter gas shortfalls have become a recurring political and economic problem, disrupting industry and daily life. The authors argue that the country’s path forward lies less in extracting more gas than in consuming what it already produces more wisely, and in exploiting a solar and wind resource that, by their measurement, remains largely untapped. Whether the expert-ranked priorities translate into policy will depend on investment, infrastructure, and the broader economic constraints the study itself documents, but the analysis offers a data-grounded baseline for a debate that has often been conducted with inconsistent statistics. For now, the paradox stands: the world’s second-largest gas reserves, third-largest gas production, and a population that consumes more of it per person than almost any other, all while furnaces run short in the cold months.

Subject of Research: Assessment of Iran's natural gas reserves, production, and consumption and expert-ranked strategies for reducing the country's energy imbalance

Article Title: Natural gas resources and energy imbalance in Iran: assessment and strategic solutions

Article References: Ganjaeian, H., Hosseini, S. J., Shahjamali, M., Ebrahimi, A., & Akbarian, M. (2026). Natural gas resources and energy imbalance in Iran: assessment and strategic solutions. GeoEnergy Communications, 2(1), Article 11. https://doi.org/10.1007/s44421-026-00023-8

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s44421-026-00023-8

Keywords: Iran, natural gas, energy imbalance, gas reserves, AHP, solar energy, wind energy, energy consumption, renewable energy, South Pars, energy efficiency, GeoEnergy Communications