Iran to produce 41% of ME petchems

An Iranian deputy oil minister says the country will account for 41 percent of petrochemical production in the Middle East within seven years.

Abdolhossein Bayat, who is also the managing director of National Petrochemical Company (NPC) made the remarks at the opening ceremony of the 10th International Petrochemical Forum in Tehran on Monday.

The Iranian official said that that Iran plans to establish 33 new petrochemical complexes, part of which will be constructed along the shores of the Sea of Oman and Chabahar Free Zone.

Other projects will be implemented in the country™s new development areas of Lavan in the Persian Gulf, Sarakhs in the northeastern parts of country and southern Iranian port cities of Mahshahr and Assaluyeh, he added.

He further said that upon the implementation of underway projects, Iran™s installed petrochemical production capacity will increase to 100 million tons per annum by the end of the country™s Fifth Five-Year Economic Development Plan in 2015.

Bayat said Iran™s installed petrochemical production output reached about 51 million tons in the last two years.

On Sunday, Director for Planning and Development at the NPC Ramezan Oladi said Iran currently represents about a quarter of the Middle East™s petrochemical products.

Oladi said that Iran has a roughly 25-percent-share of the petrochemicals in the Middle East, and is planning to increase it to 38 percent by 2015.

He said petrochemical products accounted for 37.5 percent of the country™s non-oil exports and 47 percent of industrial exports in the year to March 2013.

Iran reaped USD 12 billion from exporting petrochemicals in the last Iranian calendar year which ended on March 20, 2013.

Nearly 60 countries, mainly from South and Southeast Asia, imported Iran™s petrochemical products in the previous Iranian calendar year.

The Islamic Republic is determined to become the biggest petrochemical producer in the Middle East.

Iran has significantly expanded the range and volume of its petrochemical production over the past few years, and the NPC has become the second largest producer and exporter of petrochemicals in the Middle East after Saudi Arabia.

YH/AS