Iran will soon start exporting jet fuel supplies produced in the Bandar Abbas refinery in Southern Iran, an Iranian deputy oil minister announced on Saturday, Fars news agency reported.
"The jet fuel production line has come on line in Bandar Abbas oil refinery for the first time and has successfully passed its testing phase and fuel production is currently underway," Alireza Zeiqami said.
"The initial steps for exporting jet fuel supplies and its shipment have been coordinated in a bid to show another proof of the independence of the Islamic Iran to the world people," the official added.
Last month, Managing Director of the National Iranian Oil Refining and Distribution Company (NIORDC) Jalil Salari said that work is well underway to prepare for the launch of the pipeline carrying jet fuel for exports.
He said a number of neighboring and East Asian countries have expressed willingness to buy Iranian jet fuel.
On July 12, Zeiqami had told FNA that "We are prepared to export jet fuel to the neighboring states".
He stressed that Iran "is not faced with any problem in the production and storage of jet fuel", and played down the recent boycott imposed by certain western states on the supply of jet fuel to Iran and Iranian planes.
Iran started hiking up its jet fuel production capacity after US President Barack Obama signed into law the toughest ever US sanctions on Iran aimed at choking off Tehran's access to imports of refined petroleum products like jet fuel and curbing its access to the international banking system.
In a similar case earlier, Iran increased its gasoline production after the United States and the European Union started approving their own unilateral sanctions against the Islamic Republic over its nuclear program, mostly targeting the country's energy, including a US boycott of gasoline supplies to Iran.
After the UN Security Council ratified a sanctions resolution against Iran on June 9, 2010, the US Senate passed a legislation to expand sanctions on foreign companies that invest in Iran's energy sector and those foreign companies that sell refined petroleum to Iran or help develop its refining capacity.
The bill, which later received the approval of the House of Representatives, said companies that continue to sell gasoline and other refined oil products to Iran would be banned from receiving Energy Department contracts to deliver crude to the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve. The bill was then signed into law by Obama.