But just after that announcement, a news report from Venezuela said Iran was buying gasoline there for the first time in two years.
Starting about last August, Iran produced gasoline at six petrochemical plants under an emergency plan to foil a new US law providing sanctions on foreign firms supplying gasoline to Iran.
Iran had been importing about one-third of its gasoline needs. Many in Congress concluded that if they could stop gasoline sales to Iran, it would bring the Islamic Republic to its knees.
The threat of sanctions convinced almost all major gasoline traders to stop doing business with Iran. But Iran then started gasoline output from the six petrochemical plants. That reduced petrochemical output, but the regime did not seem to care.
In September, Iran announced that it had halted all gasoline imports. There have been no reports from industry sources alleging that any firms are delivering to Iran, so the Iranian claim appeared to be true.
But on Tuesday, the Oil Daily newsletter quoted unnamed sources as saying Venezuela had signed a contract to provide Iran with 60,000 tons of gasoline each month. It didn’t say how long the contract was for. It said the first tanker shipment would arrive in Bandar Abbas next month.
The sum of 60,000 tons comes to about 50 million liters.
Iran’s refineries produce about 44 million liters of gasoline per day. For the week ending January 14, Iran’s oil distribution company announced that daily gasoline purchases averaged 53.2 million liters.
That would leave a gap of about 9 million liters a day that the petrochemical plants (or imports) still needed to fill, raising questions about the halt in output at the petrochemical plants.
The Venezuelan imports would only fill the gap between production and current consumption for about five days a month.
The question remains as to how the gap is being filled. That question has not been answered, though some think the country has built up enough gasoline reserves to tide it over until new refinery capacity comes on line, supposedly in a matter of weeks.
Over the past five months, Iran produced 17 million liters of gasoline a day at the petrochemical complexes, the Mehr news agency reported January 22.
Oil Minister Masud Mir-Kazemi said in a January 16 news conference that Iran’s gasoline reserves had “reached a peak,” without giving any numbers.
Iranian officials say the success of the emergency program for manufacturing gasoline shows the country is self-reliant and can thwart “enemies’ plots.”
Local media reports have linked an increase in air pollution in the capital to the country’s hasty production of lower-quality gasoline. Mir-Kazemi rejected that assertion, saying it had been fabricated by foreign news organizations in response to the failure of Iran’s adversaries to pressure it with the gasoline embargo. Actually, the charge arose in Tehran among Iranians seeking an explanation for why air pollution reached new heights last month.
