Behzad Mohammadi said a total of $11.5 billion worth projects would be launched in Iran by the end of the current Iranian calendar year (March 20, 2021).
Mohammadi added that the projects would add 25 million tons to the country’s annual production capacity and bring it to 90 million tons per year.
He described the current calendar year as the golden year for the petrochemical industry, saying 17 projects were planned to come online in the year with 11.5 billion dollars of investment.
The first of these projects was Miandoab Petrochemical Project which came on stream last week.
Petrochemical industry plays a crucial role in Iran’s non-oil economy, as the petrochemical export is the second-largest source of revenue for the country after crude oil. Petrochemical exports already constitute nearly 33 percent of the country’s non-oil exports.
Iran has been highly developing this sector over the recent years as the development of the giant South Pars gas field (Iran shares with Qatar in the Persian Gulf) has been supplying more feedstock to the petrochemical units.
Also, the US sanctioning Iran’s oil exports has encouraged more development of the petrochemical industry to boost exports from this sector.
The country has also been developing the industry’s downstream sector in order to promote the production of products with more added-value.
In this regard construction of petrochemical parks, petro-refineries alongside the development of the country’s current petrochemical complexes is highly pursued by the oil ministry and especially the National Petrochemical Company (NPC).
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