Sadeghabadi made the remarks on Sunday night reiterating that, “gasoline imports will be stopped as of the beginning of the next Iranian calendar year.”

The Ministry of Oil has planned to cut gasoline import into the country, he said, adding, “for this purpose, any budget has not been considered for importing gasoline and called on all refineries of the country to maintain production capacity of gasoline as much as 80 million/liter.”

Daily production of one to two million liters of gasoline will come on stream in Lavan Refinery before the termination of the current Iranian calendar year in 1396 (to end March 20, 2018), so that the daily production capacity of gasoline will be stabilized in the country, the deputy oil minister observed.

He put the production capacity of gas condensates in Persian Gulf Star Refinery, based in Bandar Abbas, by the yearend at 360,000 barrels of feed and 36 million liters of Euro-5 gasoline.

In conclusion the deputy minister of oil added, “to solve debt problem of National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC), we have requested National Development Fund of Iran (NDFI) to pay 260 million euro in order to pay debt of the company indebted to contractors in the 2nd and 3rd phases of Persian Gulf Star Refinery. However, the government has agreed with the request of the Ministry of Oil and we hope that this amount of fund will be injected into the ministry as soon as possible.”

/SR