Baku, Azerbaijan, July 25
By Fatih Karimov - Trend:
Iran's petrochemical output rose over 5 percent in the first four months of the current Iranian year.
Ali-Mohammad Bassaqzadeh, production control manager at the National Iranian Petrochemical Company, said the production rise was due to the inauguration of four production units at phases 12, 15, and 16 of the South Pars gas field, the IRNA news agency reported on July 25.
He predicted that the country's petrochemical output would hit 48 million tons by the end of the current year (March 2015).
On July 23, Mohammad Hossein Peivandi, deputy managing director of National Iranian Petrochemical Company, said Iran's petrochemical exports rose by 6 percent in spring 2014 compared with 2013.
Petrochemical production grew by 6.5 percent in spring, which corresponds to the first quarter of the current Iranian calendar year, the IRNA news agency reported.
Generally, sales of petrochemicals increased by 6.6 percent year on year, he added.
In February, National Iranian Petrochemical Company's Managing Director Abbas Sheri Moqaddam said Iran needs $31 billion to inaugurate 60 semi-finished petrochemical projects.
To date, just $5 billion is estimated to be spent in the projects, the Mehr News Agency quoted Sheri Moqaddam as saying.
Once the projects come on stream, they will increase the country's annual petrochemical output by 55 million tons, he said, adding that $74 billion is needed to expand the national petrochemical industry in the next 8-10 years.
The value of Iran's annual petrochemical output may double to $40 billion, Oil Minister Bijan Namdar Zanganeh said in September 2013.
Between 1996 and 2006, the first surge in the value of petrochemical output occurred, so that the annual production increased from $1 billion to $20 billion, IRNA quoted Zanganeh as saying.
In the second surge, the figure will reach $40 billion, he added.
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