Iran’s monthly capacity for gasoline export could top 3mn tons: Official

Alireza Sadeqabadi, who heads the National Iranian Oil Refining and Distribution Company (NIORDC), said on Sunday that Iran’s current production of gasoline, around 115 million liters a day, was enough to pump more than 500,000 tons of the fuel for monthly exports.

He said, however, that the NIORDC was ready to increase the export capacity to three million tons a month to generate around 1.5 billion in revenues for the government.

The calculations provided by the official were based on figures obtained from sell-offs of several cargoes of gasoline at Iran Energy Exchange (IRENEX)) over the past eight weeks.

Sadeqabadi said refineries operated by the NIORDC had pocketed more than $430 million in revenues for selling gasoline cargoes at IRENEX at a price of $500 per ton.

Exports of gasoline and other products derived from oil started in late August when authorities said there were growing demands from the neighboring countries.

Iran’s gasoline, LNG exports hit weekly recordIran’s energy exchange market IRENEX reports $100m worth of exports for gasoline, LNG in one week.

It came amid increasing pressure of the American sanctions on Iran’s’ direct sale of crude and concurrent with efforts to strengthen the downstream sector of the oil and gas industry.

The growing sale of gasoline comes less than a decade after Iran decided to launch new production facilities or reprogram current refineries to cut imports of the fuel.

That came after the country, which consumes around 100 million liters of the fuel each day, suffered briefly under a previous round of sanctions that targeted gasoline imports.

The IRENEX said earlier this week that a $57- million cargo of diesel had been sold at the export ring of the local bourse within minutes of offering to foreign customers.