According to PIN, Mostafa Elahi, Managing Dirctor of Esfahan Refining Oil Company (EROC), also said the main targets of the products-improvement and the refinery-optimization plans of Esfahan Refinery, which processes 375,000 barrels of oil per day and produces 24 percent of Iranian petroleum products, was to promote the quantity and quality of outputs.

 He also said: "considering the refinery has been built three decades ago and the old environmental standards are not applicable now, the company can not meet increasingly domestic gasoline demands based on those standards. So optimization plan will be executed to set aside heavy and low-value products, such as fuel oil and instead of that to produce light and high-value kinds." 

Despite huge oil reserves, Iran lacks the refining capacity to cater for its highly subsidized local transport market, forcing it to import up to 40 percent of its gasoline supplies.