TEHRAN – President Hassan Rouhani, on Thursday, officially inaugurated Persian Gulf Bid Boland Gas Refinery in southwestern Khouzestan Province through videoconference.

In addition to the mentioned project, the second phase of a project for collecting flare gas of the fields located in the country's southern oil-rich regions was also inaugurated.

Some $4.59 billion has been invested in the mentioned projects, of which $3.4 billion has been invested in Bid Boland Refinery and nearly $1.2 billion is spent on the flare gas recovery project.

Bid Boland Refinery has been put into operation with the aim of increasing the production of sweet gas, reducing the consumption of petroleum products, production of propane, butane, and gas condensate, the export of by-products, the supply of natural gas to urban areas, and supplying ethane required by petrochemical units in the region.

The refinery, which took 36 months to complete, has a daily processing capacity of more than 56 million cubic meters of associated gas and when operating at full capacity it will generate $700 million of revenue every year.

This complex receives about 13.500 tons of sour gas per year from NGL 900 and 1000 Plants while receiving 2.25 million tons of sweet gas from NGL 1200 and 1300 Plants.

As the largest gas refinery project in West Asia, Bid Boland will have an annual production capacity of 10.4 million tons of methane, 1.5 million tons of ethane, one million tons of propane, 600,000 tons of gas condensates, and 500,000 tons of butane.

Bid Bolad Refinery project was recently nominated for the International Project Management Association (IPMA)’s Global Project Excellence Award at the energy sector; it was also awarded as Iran’s top mega project by the Ninth National Project Management Award.

The second inaugurated project is aimed at recovering the flare gas of the country’s southern oil fields to supply it as feedstock to Bid Boland Refinery.

This project is implemented as part of the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC)’s plans for environmental protection in recent years.

In this regard, National Iranian South Oil Company (NISOC), a major NIOC subsidiary that operates the country’s southern oil fields, had inked a deal worth $1.2 billion with Persian Gulf Petrochemical Industries Company back in 2019 for flare gas recovery and utilization.

For utilizing the collected flare gas, Maroon Petrochemical Company and the Persian Gulf Bid Boland Gas Refinery were designed and implemented specifically to be able to receive the feedstock supplied from the recovered flare gas and turn it into the feedstock needed by the country’s petrochemical industry.

EF/MA