TEHRAN - National Iranian Oil Refining and Distribution Company (NIORDC) and state-owned Iran Khodro Company (IKCO) signed a $20 million deal on Sunday to co-manufacture 45,000 dual-fuel vehicles for the country’s public transportation fleet.

The signing ceremony was attended by the NIORDC Head Jalil Salari, IKCO Managing Director Farshad Moghimi, and Deputy Industry, Mining and Trade Minister Mohsen Salehi-Nia, Shana reported.

Based on the deal, of the mentioned vehicles 40,000 will be taxis and 5,000 are going to be vans.

NIORDC and IKCO had signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) in December 2019, to add new dual-fuel vehicles to the country’s public transportation fleet.

According to that MOU, 1.46 million dual-fuel vehicles were supposed to be added to the public transportation fleet, reducing the country’s daily gasoline consumption by 10 million liters.

Back in May, the Head of NIORDC’s compressed natural gas (CNG) programs Mohammad-Hossein Baqeri said 132,000 public transport vehicles were going to become dual-fueled across the country.

The mentioned vehicles would become dual-fuel under the framework of a program launched back in May 2020, for the promotion of CNG consumption instead of gasoline. The program is aimed at converting over 1.46 million public vehicles into dual-fuel ones.

Iranian Oil Ministry considers CNG as the national fuel, therefore, to increase the share of this fuel in the country's energy basket, it was planned to turn public vehicles into dual-fuel cars, which can increase CNG consumption by 10 mcm per day.

There are currently 2,400 CNG stations across Iran that supply 22 percent of the country’s fuel basket.

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Photo: The NIORDC Head Jalil Salari (L), IKCO Managing Director Farshad Moghimi exchanging signed contract documents in a ceremony on Sunday.