TEHRAN - Nearly two million tons capacity of Iran’s idle petrochemical units will be revived in the next Iranian calendar year (starts on March 20), IRNA reported on Saturday, quoting a manager with the National Petrochemical Company (NPC).

“In the past few years, for some reason, part of the production capacity of the country’s petrochemical complexes has not been operational, so with the planning and coordination among various holdings and petrochemical complexes, approximately two million tons of these idle capacities will be put back into operation next year,” Jalal Mirhashemi, NPC’s production control manager said.

According to Mirhashemi, the realization of the second and third leaps of the petrochemical industry along with removing barriers, and increasing the production capacity have become the main goal of NPC for the upcoming year.

The ground can be prepared for increasing Iran’s production and exports of petrochemicals by making optimum use of the installed capacity in the country and helping idle units become operational, Mirhashemi said.

“By identifying production bottlenecks and removing them according to their priority, it would be possible to make maximum use of the capacity created earlier through hefty investments in the domestic petrochemical sector without the obligation of spending heavily,” he noted.

He further stressed that the NPC plans to take necessary measures to increase the diversity of the country’s petrochemical products to meet the domestic needs and to increase the share of the country’s export markets.

The petrochemical industry is one of the most important pillars of Iran’s economy and one of the main suppliers of foreign currency especially the euro for the country.
According to Iranian Oil Minister Bijan Namdar Zanganeh, the country is currently producing nearly 70 million tons of petrochemical products annually.

EF/MA