The Iranian Gas Engineering and Development Company (IGEDC) plans to develop 4,100 km of new gas pipelines across Iran by 2025, including 800 km by March 2020. The company has outsourced the construction of 2,000 km of pipelines to private developers. According to the National Iranian Gas Company (NIGC), as of July 2019, 96.9% of cities and 73.6% of rural areas are connected into the gas grid. In January 2019, the Parliament issued a bill that allocated IRR 50,000bn (about US$1.2bn) for expanding the country’s gas grid to new rural areas. Oil and gas companies will access bank financing with the mentioned fund under the Oil Ministry’s guarantee. Iran is a major potential market for thermal capacity development. The installed capacity is 75 GW, 12 GW of which is hydropower, 48 GW gas, 14 GW oil-fired capacities and nearly 1 GW nuclear (end of 2017).