TEHRAN - National Iranian Oil Products Distribution Company (NIOPDC) has ordered a 50,000-ton wharf to be constructed for the company at the southeastern Chabahar port, Shana reported on Monday.

As reported, NIOPDC Managing Director Keramat Veiskarami issued the order during a visit to the company’s Shahid Shoushtari oil storage in the port.

On the sidelines of the visit, Seyed Kazem Asad, the head of NIOPDC Chabahar office, stressed the importance of a suitable wharf for the vessels to dock near the Shahid Shoushtari oil storage and said: “construction of the new wharf will significantly reduce the company’s costs.”

Back in August 2018, NIOPDC had announced that the company is going to construct a new oil terminal at Chabahar Port in the future.

The mentioned wharf is going to be constructed as part of the Chabahar Port oil inventory development project.

Iran has awarded the development project of this port to India, and the South Asian country committed $500 million to build two new berths in this port.

Chabahar has two main ports, Shahid Kalantari port and Shahid Beheshti port. Shahid Kalantari port’s development has been finished in 1983. However, the development project for Chabahar’s Shahid Beheshti port is planned to be implemented in five phases of which the first phase was started in 2007 and due to financial problems resulted from U.S.’s first round of sanctions on Iran the project was almost halted until 2016 in which the sanctions were lifted over Iran’s economy.

India has doubled the allocated funding for the development of Chabahar port in its national budget bill for 2020.

As reported, the Indian government has allocated Rs100 crore (nearly $14 million) for the Chabahar port project in the 2020 budget, while the allocation in the last budget was Rs45 crore.

EF/MA