Press TV - A senior Iranian oil ministry official says monthly capacity for gasoline exports could reach three million tonnes.

Alireza Sadeqabadi, who heads the National Iranian Oil Refining and Distribution Company (NIORDC), said on Sunday that Iran�s current production of gasoline, around 115 million liters a day, was enough to pump more than 500,000 tonnes of the fuel for monthly exports.

He said, however, that NIORDC was ready to increase the export capacity to three million tonnes a month to generate around 1.5 billion in revenues for the government.

The calculations provided by the official were based on figures obtained from sell-offs of several cargoes of gasoline at Iran Energy Exchange (IRENEX)) over the past eight weeks.

Sadeqabadi said refineries operated by NIORDC had pocketed more than $430 million in revenues for selling gasoline cargoes at IRENEX at a price of $500 per ton.

Exports of gasoline and other oil products started in late August when authorities said there were growing demands from neighboring countries.

It came amid increasing pressure from US sanctions on Iran�s direct sale of crude and concurrent with efforts to strengthen the downstream oil and gas sector.

The growing sale of gasoline comes less than a decade after Iran decided to launch new production facilities or reprogram current refineries to cut imports of the fuel.

That came after the country, which consumes around 100 million liters of the fuel each day, suffered briefly under a previous round of sanctions that targeted gasoline imports.

IRENEX said earlier this week that a $57- million cargo of diesel had been sold at the export ring of the local bourse within minutes of offering to foreign customers.