Underground Coal Gasification as a Strategy to Improve Energy Economy of Iran

Abstract

Enjoying the twelfth largest coal reserve in the world, only one percent of Iran’s energy consumption basket is supplied by coal. Now, Iran’s energy economy is under the influence of natural oil and gas resources, causing other more profitable energy resources to be neglected. The Underground Coal Gasification (UCG) technology is a procedure to transform the underground coal into gas, resulting in improving the recovery of coal layers with different thicknesses and depths. This technology may be considered as a strategy to feed the domestic gas network with the synthetic gas of UCG. Therefore, Iran’s gas export capacity will be improved, helping domestic and foreign economy of energy. Implementing and using the UCG technology in Iran will help us take a leap toward the goals of upstream documents and orders of the Supreme Leader in the fields of oil and gas.

Keywords

• Underground Coal Gasification; energy; new technologies; economy