Azerbaijan, Baku, Feb. 11 /Trend S.Isayev, T. Jafarov/
Persian Gulf countries do not welcome Iran's initiative to establish a joint organization for exporting petrochemicals, Professor of Political Science, expert on Iran and Middle East, Reza Taghizadeh told Trend.
Recently, General Manager of Iran's National Petrochemical Company (NPC) Abdolhoseyn Bayat said Iran has proposed to establish an OPEC-like organization for petrochemicals.
Bayat noted that the idea of establishing such organization was proposed to establish an international organization to target and control the global petrochemicals markets.
GM of Iran's National Petrochemical Company added that currently Iran has the capacity to export about 57 million tons of petrochemicals annually, and it is planned to increase this figure to 100 million tons.
Statistics for the first 10 months of the current Iranian year showcase that the country exported some 22 million tons of petrochemicals worth over 10 billion dollars.
The mount is expected to rise to over 14 billion dollars by the end of year.
Taghizadeh noted that the recent sanctions imposed on Iran also include petrochemicals.
"The shipments and exports that are worth a $1 million per year, fall under sanctions," Taghizadeh said. "Aside from the exports, the money transfers are also restricted by the sanctions."
Taghizadeh said that as a result of sanctions, Iran's exports of petrochemicals have declined, and the country is looking for a way out to this problem.
Speaking of the possible establishment of petrochemical-managing organization, Taghizadeh revealed the reasons why other neighboring countries will never agree to that.
"Most of these countries compete with each other," he said. "They are not interested in establishing a joint organization. On the contrary, it is to their advantage that Iran gets hammered by sanctions."
He noted that the quality of Iran's petrochemicals is lower than those of Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, adding that Iran's petrochemicals are also cheaper in price.
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