The head of the Optimization Organization says the country’s daily gasoline consumption is on average about 135 million liters. Of this amount, about 112 million liters are produced in the country’s refineries, and nearly 9 million liters are also supplied through converting petrochemical products into gasoline.

Thus, even with producing non-standard petrochemical gasoline, there is a daily shortage of 14 million liters of gasoline in the country.

A confidential document from the Ministry of Oil, which had previously been obtained by VOA, shows that even in 2023, when the gasoline shortfall was lower than its current level, 20% of the country’s gasoline consisted of non-standard chemical additives and petrochemicals, and the ratio of additives to gasoline produced by the country’s refineries in 2023 compared with 2018 had increased by more than three times.

In continuation, Saqab E Isfahani said that if the level of gasoline consumption of domestic car engines were similar to that of cars in the modern world, we would not now be seeing an imbalance between gasoline production and consumption.

He said that a large part of the country’s gasoline consumption is wasted in the engines of vehicles that “have no similar type anywhere else.”