Iran has inaugurated the third phase of Persian Gulf Star Refinery, the largest gas processing plant in the world that will make the country self-sufficient in gasoline production.
The third line was opened by Iranian President Hassan Rouhani on Monday who is touring the southern Hormozgan Province on the shores of the Persian Gulf.
The plant, the first of its kinds in the Middle East, has a processing capacity of roughly 360,000 barrels of gas condensate a day within three 120,000 barrels per day (bpd) distillation units.
Russia is constructing Amur Gas Processing Plant, that will be the largest of it kind in the country and the second-largest in the world after Iran's Persian Gulf Star refinery. It's design processing capacity is 42 billion cubic meters of natural gas per year and is exptected to produce helium, ethane, propane, butane and pentane-hexane.
Qatar's Laffan Refinery, developed in two phases, has a processing capacity of 292,000 barrels per stream day (bpsd).
Phase one of the refinery was officially inaugurated in April 2017, while the first shipment of gasoline was delivered for distribution in June 2017. The second phase was commissioned in July 2018.
Iran has the second largest gas reserves in the world after Russia and followed by Qatar.
The refinery will produce high-quality gasoline in order to make Iran self-sufficient in gasoline production. It’s fourth phase will also enable the nation to export gasoline and other high-value products to foreign countries.
The plant has also the capacity to produce 45 million litres a day of Euro-V grade gasoline that accounts for half of the daily consumption in the country.
Each of the three phases of development are designed to produce 12 million litres a day (Ml/d) of Euro-IV grade gasoline, 4.5Ml/d of Euro-IV diesel, 1Ml/d of kerosene and 300,000l of liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) a day.
The gas condensate refinery is the first of its kind in Iran and is located on 700 hectares of land on the western side of existing Bandar Abbas Gas Condensate Refinery, approximately 25km away from Bandar Abbas.
The gas condensate to be refined is supplied from the South Pars offshore gas field, which is located in the territorial waters between Iran and Qatar in the Persian Gulf.
Nearly 70% of the its facilities were built domestically and it was run totally by Iranian engineers.