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TEHRAN: Angry youths torched petrol stations and long queues formed at fuel pumps after oil-rich Iran announced the start of fuel rationing, triggering nationwide protests on Wednesday.
"Several stations were damaged by agitators," state radio reported, as angry drivers joining long lines for fuel clashed with police after the surprise announcement that the rationing would take effect from midnight Tuesday.
Shouting "(President Mahmoud) Ahmadinejad must be killed," stone-throwing demonstrators set ablaze a car and petrol pumps at a service station in the Pounak residential area of northwestern Tehran late on Tuesday.
The protests are the first such open outpouring of anger since Ahmadinejad took office in 2005, although criticism has mounted recently in some economic circles that his policies were fuelling inflation and hurting the poor.
Iran, OPEC's number two oil producer and the fourth in the world, announced on Tuesday that its rationing plan, aimed at reducing colossal state petrol subsidies, would extend to private cars and taxis.
Long queues of cars, some several kilometres (miles) long, snaked from petrol stations in Tehran and across the country as armed police stood guard.
In some areas, people turned up with buckets to fill up with fuel.
"From midnight tonight (2030 GMT) petrol for all vehicles and motorcycles will be rationed," state television said, quoting an oil ministry statement issued just a few hours before the rationing came into force.
It said private cars using just petrol would be rationed to 100 litres of petrol a month while those using petrol and liquefied gas would only be allowed 30 litres.
The government said the rationing would continue for four months and might be extended further to six months in Iran, where there are more than seven million cars on the roads.
Separate quotas have also been introduced for both municipal yellow taxis and privately-run taxis, both essential means of transport in Iran.
"One car... was burnt inside the petrol station which was partially on fire," an AFP journalist at the scene in Pounak said. "The demonstrators were throwing stones. Anti-riot police deployed in the neighbouring streets intervened regularly to disperse the demonstrators before pulling back."
Cheap pump prices have encouraged such consumption in Iran that the government ironically had to spend five billion dollars importing petrol in the last financial year ended March.
Its refining capacity covers only about 60 per cent of its needs, while smugglers also illegally take cheap petrol bought in Iran out of the country to neighbouring states where pump prices are far higher.
Iran launched the first phase of the rationing plan two weeks ago, initially targeting only government vehicles.
Last month, it also raised pump prices by 25 per cent, to around 10 cents per litre, for a commodity that still costs less than a comparable amount of mineral water.
Iran estimates that without rationing, fuel imports could reach US$9.5 billion a year.
Under the plan announced Tuesday, the maximum amount of petrol allowed in total for the four-month period is 400 litres for petrol-burning cars and 120 litres for those which consume both liquefied gas and petrol. The monthly quotas can however be saved and used at a later date.
Ahmadinejad has been criticised by the reformist press for stoking already high inflation in the Islamic republic with high spending and promising lavish local investment projects on provincial tours.
Earlier this month, more than 50 economists wrote an open letter warning Ahmadinejad about the effects of his economic policies on society.
However the president, who was elected in 2005 on a platform of distributing the country's riches more evenly, insists inflation is under control and that the government is doing all it can to reduce poverty.
The central bank has predicted inflation will rise to 17 per cent in the year to March 2008, a 3.5 percentage point rise from the previous year. Some economists expect the number to be even higher. - AFP/yy
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