Baku, Azerbaijan, Oct. 9
By Fatih Karimov – Trend:
Iran’s National Petrochemical Company and Royal Dutch Shell Company will sign a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) for cooperation in petrochemical sector.
The deal is scheduled to be signed Oct. 9 in Tehran, Mehr news agency reported.
No further details were unveiled on the issue.
A delegation from Shell Company visited Iran last year and discussed aspects of cooperation with the Islamic Republic in petrochemical field.
The negotiations of Iran’s petrochemical officials with foreign companies including Shell are focused on new investments, mutual cooperation as well as mechanisms fro re-establishing cooperation.
Iran produced 46.4 million tons of petrochemicals during the last fiscal year, but for the current year, the figure is planned to reach 54.7 million tons.
The country’s actual production capacity is around 61 million tons per year, but the shortage of natural gas as feedstock, old production units and the sanctions which have dropped exports, have caused petrochemical complexes to work at a lower capacity.
Iran hopes to bring the capacity to 120 million tons by 2020 and 180 million tons by 2025.