Gasoline production at the Persian Gulf Star Refinery will reach 40 million liters per day by the end of the current fiscal (March 2019), the operation manager said.
"Work to develop the third phase of the refinery in the city of Bandar Abbas, Hormozgan Province, is underway and the current 25 million liters per day output will rise gradually," Soroush Ziglari was quoted as saying by IRNA.
He said the new phase's distillation unit is up and running, the naphtha treatment and isomerization units are being installed and will become operational early next year.
The PGSR complex is comprised of an array of units that should come on stream in “pre-determined order” and this is the reason why the development process is lengthy, the manager said.
"The refinery currently produces 25 million liters of Euro-5 gasoline and 6 million liters of other products namely diesel and liquefied gas per day worth $15 million if each liter of the two fuels is priced at 50 cents," he said. The key refinery was designed to help complete the value-added chain in the oil and gas industries.
Ziglari noted that the complex can receive as much condensates as feedstock as it needs because of the sharp fall in exports after US President Donald Trump reimposed economic sanctions in May.
Reportedly, South Korea bought 53% of its condensate from Iran.
The official added that 240,000 barrels of condensates -- ultra light oil -- are supplied from the southern city of Asalouyeh, Bushehr Province, to PGSR per day via a 485km pipeline. If the need arises, this capacity can be expanded to 800,000 bpd.
On the issue of funding, he noted, "The government has approved a €260 million loan from the sovereign wealth fund (the National Development Fund of Iran) to complete the remaining phases of the refinery."
PGSR is jointly owned by Tamin Petroleum and Petrochemical Investment Company (49%), the Oil Industry Pension Fund Investment Company (33.1%) and National Iranian Oil Refining and Distribution Company (17.9%).
According to Alireza Sadeqabadi, the chief executive officer of the NIORDC, the total gasoline produced daily in the country is 78 million liters.
Launch of the PGSR's second phase in 2017 helped NIORDC to raise production, he said.
Gasoline consumption has surpassed 105 million liters per day -- a 31% hike compared to last year (78.5 ml/d). This is while domestic gasoline output stands at 78 mld, forcing the country to keep importing around 30 mld of the commodity.
Although the completion of Phase 3 of PGSR will help produce 40,000 ml/d, experts, including Oil Minister Bijan Namdar Zanganeh, believe it is unlikely that the ever-growing consumption can be checked and reduced unless the people change their driving and fuel consumption patterns.
Iran's high gasoline consumption is due to several key factors, the most important of which are injudicious consumption, lack of quality public transport, low quality of locally-make vehicles, cheap fuel prices and rampant smuggling to the neighboring countries.
