Iran on Saturday started construction of a petrochemical complex in Masjed Soleiman city in the Southwestern Khuzestan province in a ceremony attended by First Vice-President Mohammad Reza Rahimi, Fars News Agency reported.
The urea production project carried out on 400 hectares (1000 acres) of land near the city of Masjed Soleiman and Zilayee gas field is comprised of four phases, the first phase of which was launched today.
The plant is due to produce ammonia from the gas extracted from Zilayee gas field and will then produce urea from the ammonia.
Iran, the world's fifth largest oil producer, exported around 14mln tons of petrochemical products worth more than $12bln in 2010.
The country inaugurated a number of giant petrochemical projects in Khuzestan province in Southwestern Iran in February in the presence of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
One of the projects was Amir Kabir Light Petrochemical Polyethylene worth $310 million with a production capacity of 300,000 tons a year.
In May, Rahimi stressed that Iran plans to double the volume of its petrochemical products by building dozens of production units across the country.
"The capacity of annual petrochemical production in Iran stands at 51mln tons and we are going to double this capacity by creating 66 different units to add 65mln tons to the current figure," Rahimi said, addressing the 9th International Petrochemical Forum here in Tehran.
...