TEHRAN - President Hassan Rouhani inaugurated three oil industry projects worth over 300 trillion rials (about $7.15 billion) in Chaharmahal-Bakhtiari, Khouzestan, and Boushehr provinces, Shana reported.

Inaugurated through video conference in a ceremony held in Tehran on Thursday, the mentioned projects include a petrochemical plant, a crude oil processing unit, and strategic gas condensate storage facilities in South Pars region.

The inauguration of the mentioned projects has created jobs for over 850 people in the mentioned provinces.

Since the beginning of the current Iranian calendar year (March 19) which has been named the year of “surge in production”, every week the government has inaugurated several energy, industrial, mining and development projects across the country.

The industry and energy ministries each are following their own programs in this regard, the Energy Ministry’s program is called “A-B-Iran” and the Industry, Mining and Trade Ministry is implementing a program dubbed “Persistent Production-Effective Employment-Sustainable Exports”.

The Oil Ministry has also implemented numerous projects during the 34 weeks that the mentioned programs have been started.

Earlier in August, Rouhani inaugurated three major projects valued at €4.7 billion via video conference on the occasion of the Government Week (August 23-29).

The said projects included Phase 1 of Bushehr Petrochemical Plant, lines 9 and 6 of the national gas network, and the West Karoun Oil Cluster power plant.

Also in June, the president inaugurated three energy projects worth $2.14 billion in three provinces via video conference.

Miandoab Petrochemical Plant, with an annual production capacity of 140,000 tons of heavy polyethylene, was one of the inaugurated projects.

This project, which was put into operation in the northwestern province of West Azarbaijan, plays a significant role in materializing Iran’s second petrochemical leap.

Speaking at the inauguration ceremony, Oil Minister Bijan Namdar Zanganeh said that 17 petrochemical projects were planned to come on stream this year which would boost the petrochemical production capacity of the country by 25 million tons.

EF/MA