Iran to become region’s top petchem supplier by 2025: NPC head
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.
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]."
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.