Addressing a ceremony to launch a number of major energy projects in
the southwestern province of Khuzestan on Friday, Morteza Shahmirzaei said the
country’s petrochemical revenues is planned to hit $18 billion in the current
calendar year, which began on March 21.
He added: "Currently, the petrochemical industry has become a
mature and leading industry in the value chain of the oil industry, with the
production capacity in this industry reaching more than 90 million tons per
year and the sales value of its products reaching $25 billion last year."
The NPC CEO continued: “It is expected that the export of
petrochemical products will earn about 18 billion dollars for the country this
year.”
According to Shahmirzaei, every year a part of the country's hard
currency goes out of the country due to the import of petrochemicals that are
not produced domestically, which are more important among the imported products
of the propylene chain, because they include more than 70% of the imported
petrochemical products.
Emphasizing that NPC is focused on the development of value chain
projects in order to supply imported products and reduce dependence, and helps
investors to solve the challenges of implementing these projects, he stated:
“Supplying propylene for value chain projects in this area is a big challenge
because the demand for this product in the country is much higher than its
production.”
The official, stating that the production capacity of propylene in
Iran is about 1 million tons per year, said: “At the current stage, all the propylene
produced in the petrochemical industry is consumed in its downstream units, but
the amount required by the propylene consuming units is in the nominal capacity.”
He went on to add that 35 propylene production plants have been
defined which will bring the item’s production capacity to 14 million tons per
year by 2033.