Plans have been made to launch the Euro-4 gasoline production unit as well as the continuous catalyst regeneration unit in Bandar Abbas Refinery by September, a senior oil official announced.
“The commissioning of this plan plays a key role to expand the refinery’s capacity and efforts are made to help the project go on stream as scheduled,” Shahrokh Khosravani, the deputy head of National Iranian Oil Refining and Distribution Company, told IRNA.
Pointing to the fact that Bandar Abbas Oil Refinery Company’s quality and quantity improvement plan has registered a work-in-progress rate of approximately 96.7%, he noted that the required machinery have been transferred to the site.
According to Khosravani, the plan has been mainly implemented by domestic experts and 56% of the project have been funded by domestic contractors and manufacturers.
“With the full commissioning of this plan, not only does the quantity of the refinery’s output will experience a rise and reach 3.5 million liters a day, but it will also be able to produce quality gasoline that meets Euro-4 standards. This will definitely translate into import reduction of the strategic commodity,” he said.
“The refinery’s enhancement plan includes nine units, the most important of which are heavy naphtha processing unit, light naphtha refining unit, catalytic converter unit, diesel refining unit and sulfur recycling unit with a production capacity of 25,000, 21,000, 25,000, 50,000 and 120,000 barrels per day respectively.”
Khosravani noted that plans call for developing the gasoil refining unit in the second quarter of the current Iranian year (started March 20) after the gasoline enhancement plan becomes operational. He noted that the final development of the project will be undertaken at an estimated cost of $110 million.
The Oil Ministry has devised plans to increase gasoline production capacity by as much as 11 million liters by June 2016. It has also taken effective steps to reduce the distribution of low-quality gasoline and increase the supply of Euro-4 gasoline.
According to the oil official, Isfahan Refinery’s development plan is also of great importance and as soon as it becomes operational, a large number of cities and towns located in the vicinity of this province will be supplied with Euro-4 gasoline.
According to Khosravani, a major share of the country’s Euro-4 gasoline is supplied by Imam Khomeini Oil Refining Company of Shazand and Arak in Markazi Province, with a production capacity of 16 million liters of Euro-4 gasoline per day. The CCR process is part of a process used in the petroleum and petrochemical industries, which produces aromatics from naphthene and paraffin commonly used as motor fuel.
