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Iran decreases feedstock gas price for petrochemical plants

Business Materials 15 January 2016 12:40 (UTC +04:00)

Baku, Azerbaijan, Jan. 15

By Dalga Khatinoglu - Trend:

Iran has decreased the feedstock gas price for petrochemical plants from 13 cents to 8 cents per cubic meters.

The Vice-President of Iran's Association of Petrochemical Industry Corporation (APIC) Mohammad Ali Rajaei told the Tasnim News Agency that regarding huge drop in crude oil price, it is better the government gives further discounts in both natural gas and other feedstock to attract more foreign investment in this sector.

Iran says it has planned to attract $70 billion investment in petrochemicals sector in 10 years to triple the production capacity, which stands at 60 million tons per year. However, Iran's actual petrochemical production capacity is about 44 million tons a year.

Iranian petrochemical plants uses about 13 billion cubic meters of gas per year (bcm/y), while some 2.8 million tons/year of ethane is consumed in this sector.

Iran has announced that the amount of ethane delivery to petrochemical sector would increase to 4.2 million tons/year by the end of March, but so far no data has been released.

According to the latest official statistics, the country produced 30.7 million tons of petrochemicals during 8 months of current fiscal year (started March 21), about 3 percent more than the same period last year.

It's expected the country's actual petrochemical production level reaches 44.6 million tons in the current year, remaining unchanged year-to-year.

Petrochemicals share 34.9 percent in the country's total non-oil exports during 8 months of the fiscal year, standing at 18.787 million tons in volume (+55%), and $10.33 billion in value (+9%), according to the latest data of the Trade Promotion Organization of Iran.

Mohammad Ali Rajaei said that the bank interest in Iran is 24-30 percent, while this amount in the world is about 1-2% in average.

"High bank interest make involving foreigners in Iran's petchem projects unattractive," he added.

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