TEHRAN – Head of Iran’s National Petrochemical Company (NPC) Behzad Mohammadi has said Iran is going to become the top petrochemical producer in the region after the realization of the industry’s third leap in the Iranian calendar year 1404 (begins in March 2025), IRIB reported.

In addition to the projects in the second and third leaps of the petrochemical industry, 34 new projects with an investment volume of $17 billion and a total capacity of 19 million tons have been defined, with their implementation, Iran's position will be more privileged, Mohammadi said.

He pointed to the Iranian petrochemical industry’s pioneering projects, saying such projects are the key to the development of the petrochemical industry.

“Along with other pioneering plans, defining new petrochemical projects based on mixed feedstock is a process based on thinking, effort, engineering, and accurate market calculations," Mohammadi stressed.

He emphasized that the development of the petrochemical industry should be qualitative and sustainable, adding: "The smart development of Iran's petrochemical industry has been pre-planned so that while realizing 100 million tons of capacity based on the Sixth Five-year National Development Plan (2016-2021), we would have a stable and resilient industry against external problems [like sanctions]."

Referring to Iran's first place among the world’s countries in terms of the total oil and gas reserves, the NPC head underlined the development of the petrochemical industry as a necessity considering the amount of feedstock available in the country.

“In this regard, four large projects based on mixed feedstock have been defined with a total investment of about $11 billion that will increase the capacity of the country’s petrochemical industry by 11 million tons,” Mohammadi added.

According to the official, the NPC’s pioneering projects have been classified into four major categories, namely methanol, propylene, ethylene, and benzene, according to which 20 smart projects have been defined for meeting the domestic demand and diversifying the export basket.

The petrochemical industry is playing a crucial role in Iran's non-oil economy, so that based on official data, petrochemical exports constitute the second-largest hard currency earner in Iran after crude oil. Petrochemical exports already make up nearly 33 percent of the country’s non-oil exports.

EF/MA