A top Iranian Oil Ministry official says the country’s daily use of energy has reached the equivalent of 1.05 billion liters of fuel.
Jalil Salari, a deputy oil minister and CEO of the National Iranian Oil Refining and Distribution Company (NIORDC), said on Monday that only a 10% reduction in energy usage in Iran would enable the country to significantly ramp up its exports and use the proceeds for investment in mega energy projects.
Salari said that since late March the NIORDC had delivered around 10 billion liters of gas oil to Iranian power plants that still use liquid fuel as feedstock.
“With a gas oil price of $0.8 per liter, that (amount) is worth $8 billion which can be used as investment for building two refineries,” he said.
The official also touched upon the ultra-cheap prices of fuels in Iran and said that natural gas supplied to motorists in the country was almost free of charge considering the fees paid by the NIORDC to gas stations.
Salari said households in hard-to-reach regions of Iran currently pay 1,500 rials (one third of a cent) for each liter of kerosene, adding that jet fuel supplied to airlines is still worth 6,000 rials per liter, a price announced in 2014.
Iran has some of the cheapest energy prices in the world which expert believe are a main reason behind lavish energy use in the country.
Officials have warned Iran could be forced to resume imports of gasoline and diesel after more than a decade of self-sufficiency if domestic consumption is not controlled.