A specialized meeting on "Methanol Production Surplus,
Price Effects and Completing the Value Chain" was held on Wednesday
evening, January 27, 2021, the second day of the ۶th Iranian Petroleum and Energy Club Congress and
Exhibition (IPEC 2021), which was chaired by Behzad Mohammadi, Deputy Minister
of Petroleum and the CEO of the National Petrochemical Company.
During the panel, Hassan Abbaszadeh, Planning and
Development Director of the NPC, said that Iran currently has a 20% share in
the global methanol exports market.
He described gas consumption in the country as very worrying
for methanol units, especially in the coming years, and added: "From the
current amount of gas distribution in the country, about 6 to 7 percent is
allocated to petrochemicals, and most of which is spent on utilities and only
about three to four percent is consumed as petrochemical feedstock. If the
trend of gas consumption is the same in the country by 2026 with the completion
of new methanol units, the economy of these companies will be worrying.”
Abbaszadeh continued by stating that MTP
projects are being implemented by the private sector: "In this direction,
government support is needed to increase the attractiveness of these projects
by using incentives concerning feedstock and taxing."