Speaking Wednesday at the company’s winter fuel supply conference, Saeid Rahman-Salari said expanding the CNG sector is a legal obligation for the Oil Ministry under Paragraph B of Article 46 of the Seventh Development Plan. He said 2,365 CNG stations are now operating nationwide with a combined daily supply capacity of about 40 million cubic meters of gas.

Rahman-Salari said that since the CNG industry launched in 2002, more than 12 billion refueling operations have been carried out at CNG stations, equal to 120 billion cubic meters of CNG. That volume, he said, corresponds to a savings of 120 billion liters of gasoline, generating about $75 billion in economic benefits.

25 CNG Stations Launched in the Past Year

Rahman-Salari noted recent investments in the sector, saying 25 new stations were opened in various cities over the past year. With an investment of 1.9 trillion rials, those stations helped avoid the equivalent of 288 million liters in gasoline imports. Another 93 stations are currently under construction.

He said 376 cities in Iran still lack CNG stations, adding that social equity requires the government to invest in these areas because many of them are economically disadvantaged and residents have limited options for alternative fuels.

Rahman-Salari said 16 million liters of CNG are distributed daily nationwide, equivalent to the combined output of the Tehran, Lavan, Shiraz, Tabriz and Kermanshah refineries. Without the CNG industry, he said, Iran would need to spend $36,000 per barrel to build new refining capacity.

He added that the average operating time of CNG stations is 5.7 hours per day, even though their technical capacity allows up to 14 hours. With appropriate pricing and supportive policies, he said, daily supply capacity could exceed 40 million cubic meters.