TEHRAN - Iran will increase its production capacity for petrochemical products by more than a half in the next three years as the country moves ahead with plans to increase added value in its petroleum sector.
A Thursday report by the official IRNA news agency said Iran will launch a total of 35 new petrochemical plants by 2025 to increase the output capacity in the sector by 54% to 140 million metric tons per annum (mtpa).
It said petrochemical output capacity in Iran had increased by 7% in the calendar year to March 2022 to reach nearly 91 million mtpa thanks to the completion of seven new petrochemical projects across the country.
Iran’s sales of petrochemicals, including exports to other countries, also rose by 4.4% in the calendar year to late March with government figures showing that exports proceeds from the sector reached nearly $12.5 billion over that period.
Iran has relied on petrochemicals as a major source of earning hard currency in recent years as the country has been facing a series of tough American sanctions targeting its direct exports of crude oil.
China has been the top customer of Iranian petrochemical shipments in recent years while exports to countries in the region have also surged since the United States imposed its sanctions on Iran in 2018.
The expansion of the Iranian petrochemical sector has also led to a significant rise in the number of jobs in the country. Estimates suggest the number of direct jobs in the sector is more than 920,000 compared with a total of 107,000 direct jobs registered in the upstream sector of the oil and gas industry in Iran.

Plant Saves €3.7mn by
Localizing Items

The CEO of AmirKabir Petrochemical Company Yadullah Mossadeghi Fard announced the localization of 600 parts in the company which has led to saving €3.7 million in the plant’s expenses.
Addressing the general assembly of the company, Mossadeghi Fard stated: “In the past calendar year, this company relied on the ability of the its specialists and cooperation with knowledge-based companies to reverse engineer 759 parts, of which 600 were manufactured. In total, 3.7 million Euros was saved for the company only from the indigenization of 166 items.”
According to him, the set of data-x-items includes chemicals, equipment as well as various kinds of oils, high-speed items, pentane, peroxide and DMDS.
The official continued: “The effort of this company is to reduce the demand for foreign purchases and benefit from the domestic manufacturing capacity with the help of knowledge-based companies.”