Baku, Azerbaijan, Oct.28
By Fatih Karimov - Trend: One third of Iran's petrochemical production capacity is unused.
National Iranian Petrochemical Company's Managing Director Abbas Sheri Moqaddam said the country's annual petrochemical production capacity is 60 million tons, but the current production is about 40 million tons, Iran's ISNA news agency reported Oct. 28.
Any move toward improving international relations and attracting foreign investors will lead to a promising future for the Iranian petrochemical industry, he said. We hope that the nuclear negotiations will be fruitful he added.
Iran's oil and petrochemical exports have increased following some sanctions relief on the Islamic Republic, including the EU and US bans on the country's petrochemical exports.
The easing of the ban is part of an agreement inked in Geneva last November between Iran and the P5+1 (five permanent members of the UN Security Council - the U.S., France, Britain, Russia, and China - plus Germany), under which the six countries agreed to provide Iran with some sanctions relief in exchange for Iran agreeing to limit certain aspects of its nuclear activities during a six-month period.
The Geneva deal took effect on January 20 and expired on July 20. However the two sides agreed to extend their talks for four months till Nov. 24 to reach a permanent deal on Iran's disputed nuclear program.
Iran's National Petrochemical Company (NPC)'s production manager, Ali Mohammad Bosaqzadeh, said Iran has exported more than 7.8 million tons of petrochemical products worth more than $5.1 billion in the six months ending September 22.
Official figures show Iran's petrochemical output stood at 22.8 million tons during the six-month period,which coincides with the first half of Iran's calendar year.
Iran produced 40 million tons of petrochemicals in the last calendar year (ended March 20), with $9 billion worth of its products being exported.