Baku, Azerbaijan, Oct. 10
By Fatih Karimov – Trend:
Iran’s oil ministry seeks to sign several new oil and gas contracts worth $10 billion until March 2017, Amir Hossein Zamaninia, Iran’s deputy oil minister, said.
He made the remarks on the sidelines of signing a cooperation document between Iran’s National Petrochemical Company (NPC) and Royal Dutch Shell Company, SHANA news agency reported.
The signed Letter of Intent (LoI) between NPC and Shell is an important step for resuming Shell’s activities in Iran, Zamaninia said, expressing hope that the deal will be operational as soon as possible.
NPC and Shell signed a LoI on Oct. 9 for starting studies to carry out petrochemical projects in Iran.
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 100 million tons by 2020 and 160 million tons by 2025.