Baku, Azerbaijan, Jan. 12
By Fatih Karimov - Trend: Gasoline that is produced by Iran's petrochemical refineries is not polluting.
Mostafa Afzali Fard, spokesman for the Iranian Parliament's Article 90 Commission, said all the domestic petrochemical refineries are equipped with benzene removal units. So, gasoline which is produced by the petrochemical refineries is not polluting, Iran's ICANA news agency reported on Jan. 12.
Moreover, domestically-produced gasoline was not distributed in the city of Tehran, he added.
Tehran Refinery produces gasoline which meets euro-4 standards, while gasoline which was imported by August 2014 did not meet euro-2 standards, he said.
He also rejected any relation between distributing domestically-produced gasoline with increasing number of cancers in the country.
In spite of a huge share of gas in Iran's energy basket, Iran is one of most air-polluted countries in the world.
The country ranked 12th (with 127 mg per cm in 2010) with four Iranian cities among the ten most polluted areas in the world, according to the World Health Organization, a United Nation's body. The conditions have worsened since 2010.
The first reason for the worsened situation is supplying vehicles with non-standard gasoline and diesel over the past several years. Iran had also produced non-standard gasoline at petrochemical plants during 2009-2014 after a plunge in gasoline imports.
Before 2009, Iran was importing 40 percent of its gasoline demands. Because of the US imposed sanctions on selling gasoline to Iran to persuade the Islamic Republic to curb its sensitive nuclear activities, Iran started producing non-standard gasoline in petrochemical plants.
Iran's government headed by Hassan Rouhani cut gasoline production in petrochemical units and boosted the fuel import again.
Edited by CN