In the opening ceremony of the Thirteenth Iran Petrochemical Forum (IPF), Bijan Zangeneh, Minister of Oil called the lifting of sanctions the start of a leap forward for the petrochemical industry.
“Our petrochemical production capacity has increased by 8 million tons since in 2013. No country has the same capacity as Iran in producing petrochemical feedstock. We intend to develop our production chain to reach products with higher added values”, said Mr Zanganeh.
Following the new policies to encourage the private sector to participate more in various projects The Ministry of Oil will no longer play the main role in the petrochemical industry and the National Petrochemical Company (NPC), the state-owned company, will be responsible for providing the infrastructure and drawing the outlook of this industry
In order to attract foreign investors, Iran has laid out various incentives such as long-term tax exemption and up to 30% discounts in the price of petrochemical feedstocks.
“The future supply of naphtha feed in the country will be unparalleled. With the Siraf 480 barrel refinery becoming operational, 11 million tons of naphtha will be produced annually. In the past four years however, we have unfortunately been unable to take any effective steps in converting methane to olefin”, continued Mr Zanganeh.
Marziyeh Shahdaei, Managing Director of the National Petrochemical Company, summarized the achievements of this industry over the last Iranian fiscal year: “Petrochemicals made the largest part of non-oil export products in 1395 (March 2016-17). Net sales was equal to 28 million tons with a value of 15 billion Dollars; moreover, 21 million tons of petrochemical products, worth 9.4 billion Dollars, were exported to international destinations. With an investment of 3.4 billion Dollars, eleven new projects becoming operational last year, currently the country’s real production capacity has reached 52 million tons per year”.
