Iran has turned into a diesel exporting country in the current Iranian year (started March 21), managing director of the National Iranian Oil Refining and Distribution Company said.
"By halting diesel imports, the Persian Gulf country has started to export an average of 10 million liters per day to Middle East states," Abbas Kazemi was quoted as saying by Mehr News Agency.
"Three new projects, including the first phase of the Persian Gulf Star Refinery in the southern port city of Bandar Abbas as well as a new plan on optimizing and improving diesel production process, are expected to become operational next year (March 2016-17), which leads to a further rise in Iran's diesel production capacity."
Kazemi has earlier said Bandar Abbas Refinery's Euro-4 diesel production capacity will rise by 9 million liters per day, hoping that the first phase of the refinery's Euro-4 gasoline complex, with a production capacity of 12 million liters per day, will be launched in the near future.
He announced that by increasing gas production and supplying it to domestic industrial units and power plants instead of diesel, Iran's surplus production of diesel has risen, which makes rooms for more exports.
Concurrent with export, 31 million liters of Euro-4 diesel are produced and distributed per day across Iran's metropolises.
Kazemi said plans have been made to widen the range of quality diesel distribution to all cities nationwide by March 2016.
Natural gas comprised about 86% of all the feedstock supplied to power plants nationwide in the past eight months, with diesel and mazut constituting 8% and 6% of feedstock for power generation respectively, managing director of Iran Power Generation, Distribution and Transmission Company (Tavanir) said.
Arash Kordi added that mazut and diesel consumption declined by 30% and 50% in March-November, ILNA reported.
Last week, President Hassan Rouhani said Iran's gas production capacity will reach 1 billion cubic meters in two years.
According to published reports, gas output stands at around 600 million cubic meters a day.
Iran is the fourth biggest producer and the fourth biggest consumer of natural gas in the world. It produced 173 billion cubic meters of gas in 2014, the most after the United States, Russia and neighboring Qatar.
"The Persian Gulf Star Refinery's distillation unit will go on stream by March 2016 as well, with the aim of producing kerosene, diesel, LNG and naphtha," he said.
On the markets targeted for Iranian diesel, the NIORDC chief said regional countries, especially Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan, are large markets for the oil product, adding that shipping it is also on the agenda.
On whether export of oil products is viable in view of falling oil prices, Kazemi said, "Yes, compared to gas exports with an average price of only about 20 cents per cubic meter, oil products' exports are economically more viable as they are sold at higher prices in international markets."
