Baku, Azerbaijan, Nov. 28
By Khalid Kazimov - Trend:
On average Iran exports more than 10 million liters of diesel per day to the Middle East states, a senior Iranian oil official said.
"Over the current fiscal year [starting March 21] Iran has turned from a diesel-importing country into a diesel-exporting one," Mehr news agency quoted the Iranian deputy oil minister, Abbas Kazemi, as saying Nov. 28.
Saying that Iran is going to inaugurate three new oil projects over the coming fiscal year, he added that the country's capacity for producing diesel will be boosted.
He said the first phase of the Persian Gulf Star Refinery is one of the projects expected to be inaugurated in the coming year.
According to Kazemi, Iran supplies about 31 million liters of Euro-4 diesel per day for domestic use.
He added that in the next fiscal year after inaugurating the new projects the country will only consume diesel with Euro-4 standards.
Saying that exporting diesel through shipping lines is on the country's agenda, he added that Afghanistan, Iraq and its Kurdish autonomous region as well as Pakistan have the greatest demand for Iran's diesel.
Responding to the question that if it is economically justified to enter the global oil market given the sharp decline, he said that Iran has to export oil products, facing overproduction.
According to the official, for domestic consumption Iran has replaced diesel and other oil products such as Kerosene, liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) as well as fuel oil with natural gas.
Therefore exporting such oil products is economically justified, Kazemi said.
