Iran reports record demand for fuel despite pandemic curbs

Gasoline consumption has reached a new record high in Iran, says the country’s Oil Ministry, as demand for fuel keeps rising despite government efforts to curb movements to prevent a fresh surge in the number of coronavirus infections.

Head of the National Iranian Oil Products Distribution Company (NIOPDC) said on Tuesday that average gasoline consumption for the month to July 22 had reached 107 million liters per day.

Karamat Veis Karami said that the figure was a new high recorded in the country, adding that demand for fuel had been much lower over the same month in 2020.

Veis Karami said that gasoline consumption has been rising in recent weeks despite the fact that the government has tightened its restrictions on travel amid a reported surge in infections with the Delta variant of the coronavirus.

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Iran had reported a 20% year-on-year drop in domestic consumption of gasoline for the year to late March. Consumption had declined to as low as 45 million liters per day in April 2020 when the government imposed its first and only nationwide lockdown to contain the spread of the coronavirus just two months after the disease started to circulate in the country.

Iran had also seen a sharp fall in demand for fuel after price hikes of November 2019. Figures by the NIOPDC published at the time showed that the country had some 35 million liters of gasoline surplus from a total daily production of 110 million liters per day.

Increased demand for gasoline means lower exports for Iran, a country that went from being a net importer of gasoline in early 2020s to being the largest net exporter of the fuel in the region later in the decade.

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