Baku, Azerbaijan, Nov. 26
By Umid Niayesh - Trend:
The second unit of Iran's Imam Khomeini Refinery of Shazand city (located in the central province of Markazi) has stopped gasoline production again, Iran's Fars news agency reported Nov. 26.
The refinery's Residual Fluid Catalytic Cracking (RFCC) unit went offline again for second time in recent two days due to some technical problem in valves.
As a result the refinery's Euro 4 gasoline production has almost been halved again.
The operation of the RFCC unit was suspended for 10 days in early-November for periodic repairs.
The scheduled re-launch of the unit delayed till last week due to technical problems.
On Nov. 15 while the periodic repair was coming to end a fire took place in the unit due to oil products' leakage in discharge point of the refinery's main tower.
The main part of the refinery's produced gasoline is transferred to capital city of Tehran.
During the downtime, the refinery's Euro-4 gasoline production was decreased by 8-9 million liters from 16 million per day and Tehran's gasoline demand partly supplied from storage tanks, as well as imported gasoline.
Shazand refinery produced over 3.039 billion liters of gasoline conforming to Euro-4 standard in the first seven months of the current Iranian fiscal year (March 21 - Oct. 22).
The refinery also produced 2.78 billion liters of diesel oil conforming to Euro-4 standard in the mentioned period. Some 120 million liters of super gasoline were also produced in the seven-month time span.
Iran needs to import around 10 million liters of gasoline daily to meet its domestic demands.
The country imports only the gasoline conforming to Euro-4 standard, as import of Euro-2 gasoline has been banned.
The Former Managing Director of the National Iranian Oil Products Distribution Company (NIOPDC) Mostafa Kashkouli previously said that Iran's gasoline consumption will reach 74 million liters per day in the current year.
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