Iranian petrochemical products meet international standards and are able to compete in the European market, Eastport Maritime’s deputy for business development said.
Reiner Burg also told IRNA that the company has had cooperation with Iran over the past 15 years, adding that ability, talent and a good market exist in Iran and the whole region.
Burg was speaking on the sidelines of the 12th Iran Petrochemical Forum (IPF 2015), which gathered the representatives of 368 domestic and 97 foreign companies from 25 countries in Tehran on Sunday to introduce Iran’s petrochemical opportunities in the post-sanctions period.
“The main challenge facing Iran is to regain its share in the petrochemical market,” Burg said.
Noting that although the company’s top priority is not investment, he said, “We definitely can do it. We should find some Iranian partners and cooperate with them in different sectors.”
Introducing the international company, Burg said Eastport Maritime links producers, buyers and tanker owners; “in other words, the company provides producers with services to find suitable tankers for transporting their petrochemical products””
“All Iran’s petrochemical products in Europe are of high quality and can compete with their rivals,” he said.
On the prospective customers of Iranian petrochemicals once the sanctions against Iran are lifted, he said, “China, as it did not withdraw from cooperating with the Persian Gulf country even when the international sanctions were in effect, and India, because of proximity to Iran, will be the two largest buyers.”
Burg noted that European companies also intend to enter the Iranian petrochemical market. Christian Bruch, a member of the executive board of a German oil and gas major, Linde AG, told IPF 2015 that Iran can hold a significant share of the global petrochemical market with a threefold increase in output by 2025.
“To advance its underway projects, Iran should survey the market status and feedstock prices in the next few years,” he said.
The current Iranian projects under implementation are the result of pre-sanctions development in the industry. This is while, some of the petrochemical projects in the world have been canceled due to falling oil prices.
Linde is a multinational industrial gas and engineering company founded in Germany in 1879. It is the world’s largest industrial gas company by market share as well as revenue.
Calling for diversifying the products by employing up-to-date technologies, Bruch said the remarkable rise in China’s olefin output and shale gas production have resulted in a volatile market.
He referred to an abundance of feedstock in Iran, saying Iran can have chain-divisions to shield market volatility.
“Lack of transparency in investment laws and inaccessibility to finance, as a financial tool, are challenges confronting the Iranian petrochemical industry,” he said.
Rainer Dicks, BASF’s deputy for petrochemicals, said development of downstream petrochemical industries can contribute to realizing the value-chain.
He added that with suitable feedstock prices in the Middle East, the petrochemical sector can become one of the main factors in the region’s industrial development in future.
“Middle East accounted for 13% of the world’s petrochemical output in 2014,” he said. BASF is the largest chemical producer in the world and is headquartered in Ludwigshafen, Germany.
“The industry has made proper progress in Asia, but North American countries are leading in developing the petrochemical sector,” the BASF official said.
Underscoring the promising future of petrochemical industry, Dicks said as the production capacity and demand are on the rise, BASF will look at the industry closely and intends to increase quality.
