Following the recent announcement to expand infrastructure for promoting compressed natural gas use in vehicles by a deputy director of the National Iranian Oil Refining and Distribution Company, more details were reported on Thursday.
Regarding the plan to set up low-cost small 100 square-meter CNG filling stations, Hamid Qassemi said, “Tehran Municipality has agreed to provide land in north Tehran where there is a shortage of CNG stations,” IRNA reported. No other details were available.
In the past several years, 2.3 million gasoline-powered vehicles have been converted to CNG hybrids.
Filling stations in Tehran are in short supply despite the fact that the number of cars has increased several fold in the past decades and the city has expanded in all four directions.
The main reason is high and rising land prices, especially in the upmarket areas of the sprawling capital that pushes back potential companies wanting to start other related business in the vicinity to make the gas business economically feasible.
The private sector is simply not interested in this business saying that selling fuel has no profit and is not worth the investment and accompanying hassles.
Revamping Public Transport
As per a government decision, about 1.5 million cars will be turned into CNG hybrids, which will include the entire public transport fleet (buses, taxis and vans) plus trucks and pickups.
Qassemi added that the NIORDC has finalized contracts with five large CNG storage cylinder manufacturers and two major automakers.
“Production lines of five producers of CNG cylinders are working fulltime and each company can produce 300 to 600 cylinders on a daily basis.”
Each company will deliver 10,000 CNG cylinders per month from June, and on average “we will be able to convert 50,000 plus vehicles every month.”
Two main domestic carmakers, Iran Khodro and SAIPA, will directly make CNG hybrids.
After the November of last year when the price of gasoline jumped up, more car owners started converting their car engines to CNG.
One cubic meter of CNG costs 4,600 rials (2.8 cents), which is three times cheaper than gasoline. A liter of subsidized gasoline at the pump costs 15,000 rials (9.3 cents) and non-subsidized fuel 30,000 rials (19 cents).
Depending on car type and size of the CNG cylinder, owners are charged between $300 and $400 for the conversion. There are close to 250 conversion centers and more are planned.
CNG is a much cleaner fuel because its combustion produces less toxic gas compared to the other dirty fuels.
Iran is fifth in global CNG consumption with over 2,500 CNG stations. Of the 19 million vehicles in Iran, five million plus have hybrid CNG engines and the share of CNG in total fuel consumption is 20%.
More than $2.4 billion was invested in the last decade to expand CNG use and contribute to the global effort to reduce Iran’s CO2 footprint and move to eco-friendly fuels.
