No More Gasoline Imports For Iran After Completion of New Refinery
By Staff Writer | Apr 28, 2016 07:53 AM EDT
Iran will no longer rely on gasoline imports as soon as the new refinery makes itself sufficient providing motor fuel by 2017. The plan had been launched by the National Iranian Oil Refinery and Distribution Company (NIORDC) and the Iranian Ministry of Petroleum for a major refinery project.
The Persian Gulf Star plant's first phase of the 360,000 barrel a day will be concluded during the current Iranian year ending in March where another two units will be ready in 2017.
Condensate will then be processed by the facility, which is a light oil contained in natural gas deposits in the South Pars field. The refinery has been postponed by international sanctions that restrained the country's ability to complete major projects. Before trade restrictions were established over its nuclear program, Iran has been able to purchase fuel since arriving at an agreement in January with world powers, Bloomberg reports.
Concerning upon the latest position of Iranian gasoline exports, NIORDC Managing Director Seyed Naser Sajadi said "in the time span of March 20 to April 25, a daily average of 9 to 9.2 million liters of Iranian gasoline has been deployed to world markets."
He emphasized that the last year's statistic has been 4.5 to 5 million liters per day affirming the "the export volume of the oil product so far in the current year has experienced a twofold increases compared with one year earlier," according to the MEHR News Agency report.
Once the refinery becomes fully operational, it would produce 36 m/d of high-octane gasoline and 14 ml/d of gasoline. It is owned by Oil, Gas and Petrochemical Investment Company (49%), Oil Industry Pension Fund (33.1%) and NIORDC (17.9%), based on the Vestnik Kavkaza report.
The operation of the new refinery no longer requires Iran to import. However, it will remove regional traders of an import market of almost 50,000 barrels or 8 million liters per day, says National Iranian Oil Refinery & Distribution Co.