TEHRAN – Managing Director of Iranian Investment Petrochemical Group (IIPG) says nearly 44 trillion rials (about $1.04 billion) has been invested to construct four petrochemical parks across the country.

“The construction of these four petrochemical parks would create more than 12,000 direct jobs and the average return rate of the projects is about 30 percent,” Rasoul Ashrafzadeh told IRNA.

According to the official, the first park is going to be established in Urumieh city in West Azarbaijan Province with 7.5 trillion rials (about $178.5 million) of investment.

This petrochemical park will create direct job opportunities for 940 people, while offering 2,900 indirect jobs, the official said.

“The park will be built to work on six areas, including resin making, melamine sheets, laminate flooring, MDF, HDF and parquet,” he added.

The official further noted that three other parks are going to be constructed in Ilam and Chaharmahal-Bakhtiari provinces.

As reported, two parks are set to be built in Chaharmahal-Bakhtiari province while the other one is based near Ilam.

These parks will also have different areas for producing a variety of petrochemical products including laminate sheets, paint, leather, synthetic leather, paper industries in seven areas, melamine, chemical fertilizers, and plastic industries, etc.

The construction of petrochemical parks is considered complementary of the petrochemical industry’s value chain and can prevent the sale of raw materials and the import of similar products, thus preventing the outflow of revenue from the country.

Petrochemical industry plays a crucial role in Iran’s non-oil economy, as the petrochemical export is the second largest source of revenue for the country after crude oil. Petrochemical exports already constitute nearly 33 percent of the country’s non-oil exports.

Iran has been highly developing this sector over the recent years as the development of the giant South Pars gas field (Iran shares with Qatar in the Persian Gulf) has been supplying more feedstock to the petrochemical units.

Also, the U.S. sanctioning Iran’s oil exports has encouraged more development of the petrochemical industry to boost exports from this sector.

The country has also been developing the industry’s downstream sector in order to promote the production of products with more added-value.

In this regard construction of petrochemical parks, petro-refineries alongside the development of the country’s current petrochemical complexes is highly pursued by the oil ministry and especially the National Petrochemical Company (NPC).

EF/MA