Baku, Azerbaijan, Feb.25
By Emil Ilgar - Trend:
Iran increased gas deliveries to petrochemical plants, said Iran Oil Ministry's energy summary report, obtained by Trend.
According to the report, some 45.8 million cubic meters per day (mcm/d) of natural gas was delivered to petrochemical plants during the current fiscal year, while the figure for last year was 43.7 mcm/d.
The report didn't mention how much of this amount is feedstock and how much is fuel, but, it says that during the last fiscal year (started on March 21, 2015), Iranian petrochemical plants received 5.1 billion cubic meters of gas as feedstock in total, or 14 mcm/d.
About 9.7 bcm of natural gas also was supplied to petrochemical plants as fuel.
Iran also delivered 1.525 million tons of ethane to petrochemical sector, about 51,000 tons more than the previous year.
However, it is expected that petrochemical plants' gas condensate consumption to decrease from 16.3 million tons last year to 13.4 million tons in the current fiscal year.
The report says that Iran exported 15.9 million tons of petrochemicals (with worth $10.3 billion) during last year, while for the current year the figure is expected to reach 19 million tons (with worth $9.5 billion).
Therefore, despite a 20-percent increase in volume, the value is expected to decreased by $800 million.
During last year, some 16.3 million tons of petrochemical was consumed domestically, but the figure is expected to decrease to 13.4 million tons.
The gas price as feedstock for petrochemical plants stood at 13 cents per cubic meters, remained unchanged year-to-year.
The report says that currently 51 petrochemical complexes with about 61.5 million tons production capacity annually are active in the country, while 69 new projects defined to increase the production capacity to 130 million tons per annum by 2021.
The total needed investment is estimated to be $31.4 million, while China would finance 21 of those projects worth $16.76 billion.
Iran planned to export 61 million tons per annum by 2021, the report said.