TEHRAN, Jan. 13 (Xinhua) -- Iran aims to use gas as feedstock instead of fuels like mazut to generate power by March 2018, Financial Tribune reported on Saturday.

"Mazut, an eco-unfriendly fuel, accounted for 45 percent of Iran's power plant feedstock in 2013, but declined to 8 percent in 2015, and plans are underway to put an end to it in the shortest possible time," Arash Kordi, the managing director of Iran Power Generation, Distribution and Transmission Company was quoted as saying.

"Power plants are moving towards replacing polluting fuels with natural gas as a cleaner energy resource," he said.

Over the past years, the government has instructed power plants and refineries to use gas instead of polluting feedstock as the gas output increases in the country's South Pars Gas field, Kordi said.

"Power plants and other major fuel consuming industries have dramatically cut down on consumption of liquid fuel, especially mazut and diesel, over the past 18 months," the official said.

The National Iranian Gas Company aims to increase the volume of natural gas as feedstock to power stations to 68 billion cubic meters by March 2018. The company provided 86 power plants with 62 billion cubic meters of natural gas in the previous Iranian fiscal year that ended in March 2017.