Baku, Azerbaijan, May 24
By Fatih Karimov - Trend:
The second unit of Iran's Shazand refinery has stopped gasoline production.
The second gasoline production unit of the Shazand refinery went offline on May 18 as a result of fluctuations in its power supply, Iran's Tasnim news agency reported on May 24.
The Shazand refinery's development plan aims to boost its capacity from 170,000 barrels per day to 250,000 bpd. The refinery currently supplies 16 million liters of premium gasoline and 10 million liters of diesel to the market.
Iran's gasoline consumption is around 65 million liters per day.
The country currently imports 5.5 million liters of gasoline per day.
Managing director of National Iranian Oil Refining and Distribution Company (NIORDC), Abbas Kazemi, said on May 11 that the average figure was around 3.5 million liters in the previous year, Iran's Tasnim News Agency reported.
"If the country's consumption rises, we will need to import more gasoline," he explained.
Iran's Oil Minister Bijan Namdar Zanganeh said that once Persian Gulf Start refinery's gasoline production unit comes on stream, the country no longer needs to import gasoline, Iran's IRNA News Agency reported on May 6.
The facility will come on stream next Iranian calendar year (to start on March 21, 2015).
Kazemi previously said that Iran's gasoline reserves currently stand at over 2 billion liters.