Speaking in an unveiling ceremony yesterday, Mohammadi said that the national petchem industry plays very proudly and dynamically its role in exports and earning forex for the country, noting that last year, the petchem industry received feedstock equal to $6b which was used in 67 petrochemical complexes.

He went on to say that last year, 25m tons was added to the capacity of the national petrochemical industry, adding that some 34m tons of products have been produced that earned $15b.

Pointing to the COVID-19 pandemic in the country, he said despite the pandemic, all developmental goals in the petrochemical industry have been materialized. Mohammadi also said that today there are 50 active projects in the petchem industry which will come on stream by 2025 and they will increase the production capacity to 135m tons.

Then he explained the fourth step in the petrochemical industry and said the fourth step has been defined in three categories which includes 47 projects and by 2027, Iran’s revenues from petrochemical industry will reach $50b.

Mohammadi reiterated that by 2027, some 2.3m barrels of crude oil per day will be used as the feedstock in the petchem industry and the capacity of this industry will increase to 167m tons.

He added that with implementation of the projects in the fourth step, the collective investment in this industry is estimated to hit $125b by 2017.

Mohammadi stated that access to the feedstock is the most important advantage for developing petrochemical industries and the production capacity in this industry has neared to 100m tons. He said currently industry uses some one million barrel per day of oil as the feed.

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According to Abdolhossein Bayat, the value of petrochemical product exports stands at $2.7 billion which indicates that $3,000 more revenue has been earned for each ton of petrochemical exports compared to selling raw materials.

Speaking at the International Conference of Export Development in Polymer Industries in Tehran on Tuesday, Bayat said: “We are trying to steer the economy in a direction that is oil-based instead of “oil-dependent”, and the development of complementary downstream industries is an example of this principle.”

“We are not going to produce oil as black gold and sell it to others to process it into white gold [petrochemical products], the added value of petrochemical products is much more than black gold [raw oil], so oil must be converted to other products by downstream industries so that all could benefit from it,” he said.

The official noted that in addition to creating more added value, developing downstream industries would create more job opportunities making the economy more resilient in the face of external factors like sanctions.

The petrochemical industry plays a crucial role in Iran’s non-oil economy, as the export of such products 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.

Facing the restrictions that the unjust U.S. sanctions brought about for the oil industry, its development has not been halted and, with a change in strategies, the Oil Ministry has been distancing itself from crude selling and is moving toward the production of products with more value-added.

One of the major areas for the realization of this goal has been the petrochemical industry, where a wide range of valuable products can be produced from Iran’s vast oil and gas resources.

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