Since the beginning of the current Iranian year’s cold seasons (started Sept. 23, 2022), nearly 7 billion liters of liquid fuel have been delivered to power plants across Iran via tanker trucks, which is 2.5 billion liters more than the same period of last year, managing director of the National Iranian Oil Refining and Distribution Company said.
Hailing the country's fuel transportation fleet, Jalil Salari added that “Although 28 provinces of the country were experiencing below-zero temperatures, there was no disruption in fuel supply and the required fuel was provided to all the power plants so that no blackouts happened in the country,” he was quoted as saying by the Oil Ministry’s news service Shana.
“So far this year [started March 2022], a total of 19 billion liters of liquid fuel have been delivered to power plants, about half of which was transported by 300,000 tankers,” he added.
The rise is due to increasing natural gas consumption in the household sector, after the government cut gas supply to power stations and compelled them to burn liquid fuel such as diesel and mazut.
As there is an annual growth of 6% in the household gas consumption and 5% in the industrial sector, there is normally inadequate gas for all power plants during the cold season and a number of them are obliged to use diesel and mazut.
“A total of 63 billion liters of liquid fuel have been delivered to other sectors via the country's fuel transportation fleet,” the official said.
In addition to the tankers, oil byproducts and derivatives are also transported via pipeline.
Altogether, close to 91.5 billion liters of oil and derivatives, including liquefied petroleum gas, mazut, diesel and gasoline, are transferred annually countrywide via pipelines, vessels and tanker trucks.
The length of pipelines to transfer oil byproducts exceeds 14,000 kilometers, accounting for 36% of the total transfer of oil byproducts.
Repair and renovation of pipelines are carried out on a regular basis for the sustainable and safe delivery of crude oil and byproducts.
Recently, the operation to connect Shahid Salimi (Neka) Power Station in Mazandaran Province to the national oil pipeline network was completed and the 350-km pipeline transfers mazut and diesel from Tehran Oil Refining Company to the thermal power station.
In the absence of the pipeline, at least 10,000 fuel trucks would have been needed to annually deliver close to 1 billion liters of liquefied fuel to the power plant.
Five new pipelines are about to become operational, namely Nain-Kashan-Rey, Bandar Abbas-Rafsanjan, Tabriz-Khoy-Urmia, Shahzand (in Arak, Markazi Province)-Rey and Ahvaz-Rey pipelines.
The construction of new pipelines to transfer petroleum products to southern oil terminals tops the National Iranian Oil Refining and Distribution Company’s agenda, as this approach has priority over other means of supply such as tanker trucks.
According to the official, a new pipeline has been designed to transport refined oil products, especially Euro-4 gasoline, from the Persian Gulf Star Refinery in Bandar Abbas to Tehran and other cities in the central and northern regions.
