Baku, Azerbaijan, Oct. 10
By Umid Niayesh – Trend:
Royal Dutch Shell Company is exploring cooperation opportunities in Iran's petrochemical sector.
"We can confirm that we have expressed our interest to further explore potential area of cooperation with Iran’s National Petrochemical Company through a Letter of Intent," Nureddin Wefati, head of Media Relations for the Middle East and North Africa of the company told Trend Oct. 10.
Wefati made the remarks while responding to a question about the recent cooperation documents which were signed between Iran’s National Petrochemical Company (NPC) and Shell.
The two parties signed a Letter of Intent (LoI) on Oct. 9 for starting studies to carry out petrochemical projects in Iran.
The signed LoI between NPC and Shell is an important step for resuming Shell’s activities in Iran, Amir Hossein Zamaninia, Iran’s deputy oil minister, said, expressing hope that the deal will become operational as soon as possible.
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.