Baku, Azerbaijan, Dec. 17
By Fatih Karimov - Trend:
Iran built its first indigenized petrochemical unit, which is located in the southern province of Fars.
It has been completed over the course of five years, Iran's IRIB reported on Dec. 17.
Some 20 trillion rials (about $570 million based on free market exchange rate) has been invested in the project.
The petrochemical unit has a capacity to produce 1.7 million metric tons of urea and ammonia per year. It consumes some one billion cubic meters of natural gas as feedstock.
Abbas Sheri-Moqaddam, Managing Director of Iran's National Petrochemical Company, said on Dec. 10 that Iran plans to add 2 million metric tons to its petrochemical output in the next fiscal year (will begin on March 21, 2015).
Ali Mohammad Bosaqzadeh, an official with the National Petrochemical Company, said the country's nominal petrochemical production capacity is 54 million metric tons.
"Iran's total petrochemical output capacity stood at 42.5 million metric tons in the previous year," he explained.
"We are not using about 10 million metric tons of our production capacity," the official said, blaming feed shortage and lack of storage capacity.
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