March 15, 2019
Iran is now producing more than enough gasoline to meet its needs and is already exporting gasoline (according to one official)—but has decided not to export any gasoline for now (according to another official.)
It all depends on whom you listen to.
According to Oil Minister Bijan Namdar-Zanganeh, with the inauguration February 17 of the third phase of the Persian Gulf Star Refinery in Bandar Abbas, all of Iran’s refineries combined are now pumping out more gasoline than Iran needs. According to Shana, the news agency of the Oil Ministry, he said the government wants to build up its reserve stocks before exporting anything. “We have no export plans,” he was quoted as saying.
But the Iranian Students News Agency (ISNA) reported that Alireza Sadeqabadi, the head of the National Iranian Oil Refining and Distribution Co., said that very same day that Iran is now exporting gasoline to Iraq, Afghanistan, Iraqi Kurdistan and some of the Persian Gulf littoral states. ISNA quoted him as saying no gasoline has been imported since September.
Shana quoted him as saying that Iran now consumes 87 million liters a day of gasoline while it produces 103 million, producing an excess of 16 million liters.
Furthermore, Azerbaijan’s Trend news agency reported that a deputy oil minister said Iran would have to begin importing gasoline again in another two years if it failed to curtail the rapid growth in gasoline consumption.
Iran has been eager to show that it is producing lots of higher quality gasoline, specifically gasoline that meets the Euro-5 standards set by the EU in 2009. The EU replaced Euro-5 with higher Euro-6 standards in 2014, but Iran never talks about Euro-6.
Nailing down the exact numbers on Euro-5 production, however, is difficult.
According to Shana, at the inauguration of the refinery, Zanganeh said Iran now produces 32 million liters a day of Euro-5, while President Rohani, according to Mehr, said the figure was 36 million, and Mohammad-Ali Dadvar, the managing director of the refinery, according to the Tehran Times used a figure of 45 million. According to the Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA), Sadeq-abadi said production of Euro-5 was 76 million—and 120 million in the very next paragraph.
While Shana quoted Sadeqabadi as saying total gasoline production was now 103 million liters a day, Mehr quoted Rohani as saying it would reach 100 million liters by Now Ruz.
The new refinery uses as feedstock natural gas condensate produced from the South Pars gasfield. Construction of the refinery began in 2006, but was stretched out to 13 years chiefly because Iran could not raise the capital to complete it in a few years.