Azernews.Az

Iran will inaugurate one of the largest oil storage facilities with a capacity of 345 million liters within the next month, an official with the National Iranian Oil Refining and Distribution Company said.

The Mehr news agency quoted Heydar Shamsi as saying that the facility, which is located in the south eastern Kerman province, will be used to store gasoline and diesel fuel. Some 650 billion rials ($53 million) has been invested in the project.

The Iranian private sector has been allowed to build oil storage facilities in the country, Shamsi said on Saturday.

"We have attained self-sufficiency in all the design, engineering and building processes related to oil storage facilities," he noted.

Shamsi said that five fuel storage facilities will be inaugurated by March 2013 in Iran, boosting the national fuel storage capacity to 12.8 billion liters.

He added that four new storage facilities will be commissioned by the end of the current Iranian year (March 20, 2013).

At present, Iran has the capacity to store 11.5 billion liters of fuel, which is sufficient for 58 days consumption. Last year, 16 storage facilities were inaugurated nationwide, boosting the country's storage capacity by one billion liters. The storage capacity is planned to hit 14.5 billion liters by 2016.