TEHRAN (Iran News) – Oil industry accounts for 80% of Iran’s newly indigenized products.Iranian Vice-President for Science and Technology Sorena Sattari has said that 80 percent of the products that are being produced for the first time in the country are related to the oil industry.
Speaking at the opening ceremony of the Oil Industry Innovation and Technology Park on Monday, Sattari stressed the significant role of knowledge-based companies and startups in indigenizing the knowledge for the production of new equipment and products, saying: “The government will support research on new equipment and the private sector invests on the mass production of the final products.”
“The Petroleum Industry Research Institute can be a great platform [for working on the indigenization of equipment and products], but one cannot expect a researcher at this institute to produce a final product,” he said.
“The condition must be prepared for startups to thrive,” the official said, adding: “Technology companies provide this opportunity.”
According to Sattari, most of the investment needed for the expansion of work on new technologies must be provided by the private sector and not the government.
“The private sector needs to invest 10 times more on such projects compared to the budget that the government has spent on this park,” he stressed.
The Oil Industry Technology and Innovation Park, established on a 32-hectare land near Tehran, is a governmental and non-profit organization that aims to develop oil industry-related technologies in collaboration with universities, research and development institutes, and private companies.
Strengthening domestic production and indigenizing the knowledge and technology for the production of the products and equipment that Iran imports from other countries has become one of the major programs that the country is pursuing in recent years.
To materialize this objective, knowledge-based companies have played a noticeable part, especially in indigenizing the products and equipment applied in the oil industry, which is the major sector in the country’s national economy.
