Developing Indicators for assessing The Status of Iran's Natural Gas Export Using Energy Demand Security Approach

Iran is the second-largest proved natural gas reserve holder in the world, behind Russia and holds 17% of the world's proved natural gas reserves and more than one-third of OPEC's reserves. Iran is also among the five major producers of natural gas in the world. According to rich reserves of natural gas, high success rate of natural gas exploration, and increasing growth of fossil fuel demand in highly import dependent countries like China, India, European Union, and Turkey all of which are potential markets for Iran natural gas export, there is a promising outlook for natural gas export of Iran and growth of resultant revenue in upcoming years. but due to Iran special geopolitical position, being enclosed by two strategic resources of natural gas and crude oil, i.e. Caspian Sea and Persian Gulf, and terrorist attacks and other unrests in Middle East, Central Asia, and Caucasus, securing energy demand and increasing the volume of Iran natural gas export has turned into a critical issue. In this research, after investigating Iran’s natural gas production, reserves, and export markets, seven quantitative indicators have developed according to political, economic, and infrastructural dimensions to assess Iran’s natural gas export whether in the form of LNG or via the pipeline. Policymakers of the energy economics field can analyze Iran’s current and potential gas export markets in recent years or in the upcoming years under different scenarios by using indicators introduced in this research and collecting the required data so that they can adopt appropriate policies for enhancing the energy export demand security of Iran particularly natural gas.