 TEHERAN - IranÂ’s president said on Friday the country should depend on domestic gasoline rather than imports in the second half of the Iranian year, which starts in September, and would have to impose rationing from then.
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Iran’s domestic production of gasoline does not meet local demand, forcing the world’s fourth largest exporter of oil to import oil products. Parliament has cut the budget for gasoline imports this Iranian year, which began in March. “We can import for the first six months of the year, and it means that for the second six months we should consume domestic production only, which means we would naturally move towards some kind of a rationing,” President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on state television.
Many Iranian officials have stressed IranÂ’s dependence on imported gasoline threatens national security. But diplomats and political analysts have said the West would probably shy away from slapping sanctions on gasoline sales to Iran because that could spark political volatility.
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