At least 60% of filling stations cannot meet their current expenses and are on the verge of insolvency due to high inflation, the head of Gasoline Station Owners Association said.
“Gas station commission fees are not proportional to the inflation rates and unless fees are boosted, many stations will go bankrupt due to their growing costs,” Homayoun Salehi was also quoted as saying by ISNA.
No rise in gas-station owners' commission has taken place in years, while the commission for CNG sales has been raised by the government, he added.
Gas pumps should be overhauled at least once a year, but financial constraints do not permit owners to even fix out-of-service fuel nozzles, or upgrade their tank monitoring systems, automatic tank gauges and flow meters.
There are about 4,000 filling stations across Iran.
Many gas stations are facing serious problems in repairing old dispensers and point-of-sale equipment, as well as in modernizing systems related to fuel management, recirculation and filtering, vapor recovery, secondary containment and diesel exhaust fluid, he added.
Salehi noted that they have neither the spare parts nor adequate funds to undertake such works.
“Most of the nozzles have been working for a very long time and were repaired several times but stop functioning after a few hours of repairs. Close to 1,000 old nozzles, for example, in southern provinces like Khuzestan are in need of parts that are not available in the domestic market,” he said.
The official stressed that the situation is the same in other regions, as many pumps are either nearing obsolescence, or have gone out of use since 2019 because the much-needed parts cannot be imported due to the US sanctions.
Earlier, most gas pump spare parts were imported from the US and Germany, and could be easily found at reasonable prices, but now they are only available at prohibitive prices and with difficulty.
The official said a pump plunger, for instance, cost 40 million rials ($200) two years ago, but the same device now costs $2,000.
What Iran is suffering from is not lack of engineers who can design and produce nozzle parts, but the lack of knowhow to combine different elements and metals to produce superior alloys with anti-corrosion properties.
Salehi stated that the card system has been in use for more than 12 years but the system's hardware has not been upgraded, which can expose the card system to cyberattacks.
