A total of 128 billion liters of crude oil and petroleum products were transferred via pipelines across Iran in the last fiscal year (March 2021-22), which show an 8% increase compared to the previous year and a 7% increase compared to the last decade’s average, the managing director of Iranian Oil Pipelines and Telecommunications Company said.
“Transferring crude and products through pipelines during the first seven months of the current [Iranian] year [March-October] helped prevent the use of 3 million 25,000-liter tanker trucks on the country's roads and saved 1.4 billion liters of diesel, which would have been consumed in the road transportation,” Arsalan Rahimi was also quoted as saying by ILNA.
Burning this amount of diesel by tanker tricks to deliver the products to different destinations would have cost $700 million, he added.
The official noted that in addition to decreasing liquid fuel consumption, it has reduced the risk of road accidents and environmental hazards.
The cost and risk of road transport are high because tanker trucks are basically used for transportation over short distances.
In terms of energy supply, road transport is the least efficient, as the approximate cost of moving a barrel of oil by road is 10 times more than by pipeline.
Trucking oil has a higher fatality rate compared to other means of transportation, such as railroads and pipelines. However, the transportation of oil and other products by road remains crucial due to the lack of rail infrastructure.
The construction of new pipelines to transfer petroleum products to southern oil terminals tops the agenda of the National Iranian Oil Refining and Distribution Company, as this approach has priority over other means of supply such as using tanker trucks.
IOPTC, a subsidiary of NIORDC, is in charge of transporting crude oil and petroleum products across the country.
Statistics show that during the period under review, 385 million liters per day or a total of 77 billion liters of oil and other products were transferred via pipeline. The total volume included 40 billion liters of crude oil and 37 billion liters of petroleum products.
Power Plants & Refineries Feed
Speaking about the volume of fuel supplied to power plants, the IOPTC chief said, “Last year, about 3 billion liters of liquid fuel were delivered to the power plants via pipelines and from the beginning of this year up to the end of October, 2.4 billion liters of liquid fuel sere supplied to power stations as alternative feedstock.”
A number of gas-powered units in the power plants across the country are deprived of natural gas in the cold season when household natural gas consumption peaks and they have to burn liquid fuel to generate power.
Regarding the transfer of feedstock to refining complexes, Rahimi noted that 68 billion liters of crude oil were delivered last year, which show a growth of 5% compared to the previous year.
“In the first half of the current year, the volume of crude oil transfer was 34.5 billion liters, which indicate a rise of 1.5 billion liters compared with the same period of last year,” he said.
Pipelines stretch over 14,000 kilometers across the country.
