Iran will soon become a gasoline exporter as a new refinery is planned to come on stream by March 2016, deputy oil minister said Sunday, ISNA reported.
"We will start export of gasoline no later than April 2016," Mansour Moazzami stated, referring to the construction of Persian Gulf Star Refinery.
Meanwhile, the National Iranian Oil Company is planning to increase the export of gasoil and fuel oil in cooperation with the National Iranian Oil Refining and Distribution Company (NIORDC). "This objective is within reach as power plants and other major fuel consuming industries have been cutting down on consumption of liquid fuel over the past year," Moazzami added.
He said that there's a 9-billion-liter reduction in liquid fuel consumption by power plants in the past 12 months. "Our estimates show that power plants' use of liquid fuel, including gasoline, gasoil and fuel oil, will drop to 6 billion liters in the next Iranian year (begins March 21)," the official said.
The oil ministry has pursued the policy of enhancing the supply of natural gas to power plants and, at the same time, reducing their use of liquid fuel to increase the amount of fuel oil and gasoil exports. "There's been a long delay in export of gasoil but we will surely resume it in the coming weeks," Moazzami asserted.
Last year, Iran's power plants consumed a total of 27 billion liters of liquid fuel, valued at $18 billion. In the first 10 months of the current Iranian year, the amount reached about 15.5 billion liters. "This could have reached even lower if a few power plants had abided by the regulation set by the oil ministry," according to Moazzami.
The government aims to reduce liquid fuel consumption by the major industries, and thus reduce air pollution, through increasing the supply of natural gas to the factories. This is also expected to result in an increase in export of oil products.
Unresolved Issue
It's not only the domestically produced gasoline that is substandard, deputy director of the Iranian National Standards Organization said, adding that this is also the problem with imported gasoline, Mehr news agency reported.
"We have submitted a report to the cabinet on the quality of both domestic and imported gasoline," Vahid Marandi said, adding that the result of the correspondences will not be made public.
"Our assessments show that there is a quality issue with most of the gasoline supplied across the country," he said. A cabinet approval earlier this year urged the oil ministry to distribute Euro-4 gasoline in 8 big cities, including Tehran, Isfahan, Shiraz, Mashhad, Karaj, Qom and Tabriz. Shiraz and Qom are yet to receive their share of Euro-4 gasoline, while the oil ministry has pledged to fulfill its obligation by March 20.
"The world has long shifted to high quality Euro-5 and Euro-6 gasoline, so a move upward to Euro-5 standard is the least the government should do next year," Marandi suggested.
