The head of Iran’s Central Headquarters for Combating Goods and Currency Smuggling said on Monday that fuel smuggling from Iran to its neighboring countries has reached an average of 20 million liters per day.
Alireza Rashidian said in an interview with the Tasnim news agency that diesel fuel and gasoil account for a bulk of fuel shipments smuggled from Iran.
Rashidian said that considerable supplies of gasoil and mazut delivered to Iranian power plants and agricultural units have been diverted to smuggling in recent years.
He said the government had launched a pilot scheme to identify fuel smuggling operations in five Iranian provinces, adding that some 69,000 cases of irregularities were spotted after monitoring the journey of some 200,000 fuel shipments.
The official said that huge gasoil supplies had also been delivered to owners of inactive tractors and agricultural greenhouses.
Rashidian said that police and military forces had recovered some 110 million liters of fuel from smugglers in the past three months, adding that more than 8,500 people had also been arrested for charges related to fuel smuggling over the same period.
The remarks come more than a week after the Iranian government said it was going to remove a major part of the subsidies allocated to diesel fuel as part of its efforts to control rampant smuggling.
Iran has the cheapest fuel prices in the world, with a two-tier pricing system for diesel that does not currently exceed 6,000 rials ($0.075) per liter.
That comes as official reports from the government and parliament suggest Iran will have to spend some $10 billion on fuel imports in the calendar year to late March to respond to domestic demand for gasoline and diesel.
Press TV