Azerbaijan, Baku, April 3/ Trend M. Moezzi
Iran plans to start exporting 20 million liters of petrol and diesel in the coming months as its petrol production capacity reached 70 million liters a day, Mehr news agency reported quoting managing director of the National Iranian Oil Refining and Distribution Company (NIORDC) Alireza Zeyghami as saying.
The capacity to export petrol is a result of the Iranian government's petrol quotas and its targeted subsidies program.
If these programs hadn't been implemented, Iran's daily petrol consumption would have surpassed 120 million liters a day, Zeyghami said.
If Iranians' consumption pattern had continued, the government would have had import up to 80 million liters of petrol a day. But last year (Iran's solar year ended on March 20), Iranians used less than 60 million liters of petrol a day. Iran doesn't need to import any petrol today, Zeyghami noted.
When the $4 billion expansion of the Imam Khomeini Shazand refinery is finished it will quadruple its production capacity to about 16 million liters of petrol a day.
Renovating Iran's oil refineries will also help expand its petrol production capacity. Except for Imam Khomeini Shazand and Abadan, the average age of the country's refineries is 30 years.