Optimal design for gasoline supply chain planning in Iran: technical, economical, and environmental perspectives

Abstract

Taking into account the ever-increasing consumption of energy in the transportation sector in Iran, a supply chain model is here developed for gasoline as the main energy carrier. The model considers the satisfaction of demand as well as techno-economical constraints of all technologies while minimising the cost and the carbon footprint of the whole supply chain in order to reach sustainability in the Iranian transport sector. The model enables us to depict the optimal pathways from the wells to the end-users. The demand is here estimated using econometric approach in which the elasticity of gasoline price is the least and the GDP growth rate plays an active role. Six scenarios are defined to encompass different assumptions in the supply and demand sides. It has been concluded that the gasoline import will surge dramatically and the transportation vehicles will shift to economical vehicles in all scenarios for the next 30 years. In the current scenario, the vehicles with the lowest operating cost (class 5) are chosen. Taken into account the environmental considerations, more efficient vehicles (class 2) are preferred. The present work demonstrates how economical and environmental issues are interrelated in the Iranian gasoline supply chain planning.