Baku, Azerbaijan, June 12
By Dalga Khatinoglu – Trend:
A month after official inauguration of the first phase of Persian Gulf Star Refinery, the official statistics indicate that the refinery’s output is still zero.
Mehr news agency published an official document, prepared by National Iranian Oil Refining and Distribution Company, which indicates that the output of the mentioned refinery was zero as of early June.
Iran inaugurated the first phase of Persian Gulf Star Refinery in early May, several weeks before the presidential election held on May 25. The gasoline output capacity of the first phase of the refinery, which uses gas condensate, is about 12 million liters per day (ml/d).
Iran hopes the second phase of this refinery also become operational in the current year, and the country’s gasoline production level would increase by 24 ml/d to above 80 ml/d the next fiscal year.
According to an official document, prepared by Oil Ministry and seen by Trend last month, Iran’s gasoline consumption stood at 74.75 ml/d, of which 12.1 ml/d was imported during last fiscal year.
Another document by Oil Ministry indicates that Iran refined 45,000 b/d of gas condensate from November 22, 2016 to February 20, 2017 in Persian Gulf Star Refinery for testing the distillation units. There is no information about the last month of Iran’s fiscal year, but the document published by Mehr indicates that from March 21 to June 2, the output of the refinery was zero.
The final capacity of Persian Gulf Star Refinery from three phases is 360,000 b/d, expected to be achieved by the end of 2018 or early 2019.
