Iran’s wealthiest households consume around 23 to 24 times more gasoline than the poorest, First Vice President Mohammadreza Aref said Saturday, as the government confronts widening pressure over fuel consumption, production and prices.
“Gasoline consumption today is not distributed fairly across income groups,” Aref said. “Consumption by the tenth decile, meaning the highest-income group, is about 23 to 24 times that of the first decile.”
He also revealed the scale of the supply gap during last year’s war. “On one day of the 12-day war, gasoline consumption reached 197 million liters, while the country’s normal production is around 110 million liters and sometimes reaches 125 million,” he said.
Aref warned against filling the shortfall with lower-quality imports. “Importing substandard gasoline to meet consumption is not a sustainable solution,” he said, asking whether the country should accept the financial and environmental cost simply to provide motorists with a few additional liters of fuel.
He said Iran could not continue using national resources to sustain current levels of energy consumption. “We cannot spend several billion dollars every year from public wealth and the people’s resources on energy consumption,” Aref said, arguing that oil and energy resources also belong to future generations.
Aref also delivered an unusually direct assessment of Iran’s environmental record. “If you ask me whether we have succeeded, I will not give a political answer,” he said. “As a university teacher, I say we have not succeeded and we should have done better.”