Germany's Raschig and Iran's Research Institute of Petroleum Industry have signed a memorandum of understanding on gas sweetening towers.
This is while another German major industrial company, Siemens, signed an MoU with the Persian Gulf Petrochemical Industries Company to forge cooperation in the petrochemical sector.
The former agreement was signed on Monday by Mansour Bazmi, the deputy head of RIPI for international affairs, and Saeed Abedini, the director for business development of Raschig in Iran, on the sidelines the 23rd International Oil, Gas, Refining and Petrochemical Exhibition which was held in Tehran from May 6-9, Shana reported.
According to Bazmi, cooperation has been undertaken for increasing the capacity of distillation towers in oil and gas refineries.
"This is the first cooperation in gas sweetening towers, which will help gas refineries boost their capacity," he said.
The Raschig representative hoped that the two sides would widen the gamut of oil and gas collaborations.
Raschig and RIPI had also signed a memorandum of understanding in November 2017 on transfer of technology to Iran's oil, gas and petrochemical industries.
The preliminary deal was centered on providing Iran with the know-how to design and build distillation units at refineries and petrochemical plants based on Raschig’s equipment.
The German firm has held training courses in Tehran as part of the agreement.
RIPI that has conducted a series of activities on designing distillation columns, will be able to use new approaches of Raschig in its projects. It is a governmental research institute founded in 1959 in Tehran, and is affiliated with National Iranian Oil Company.
Siemens
Based on the agreement between Siemens and PGPIC, their ties will not be limited to buying commodities, as the two sides will have long-term cooperation on repairing, maintenance and upgrading the quality of products.
According to Jafar Rabiei, the managing director of PGPIC, this cooperation will help reduce the price of foreign commodities and forge links between domestic companies and big international firms.
"Iran's petrochemical industry will have long-term cooperation with Siemens. In the past, cooperation with Siemens was based on separate agreements and in case we needed identical products, we had to go through the same lengthy process," he added.
Siemens has had strong presence in Iran's petrochemical sector. Several operational and under-construction refineries in the country are using the equipment supplied by the German company.
PGPIC is Iran’s largest petrochemical company with over 60 subsidiaries, owning more than 11% of Iran’s capital market. Its exports are estimated at $8-9 billion per year.
According to published reports, PGPIC is the second biggest petrochemical exporter in the Middle East.
Tehran is making efforts to double annual petrochemical production capacity from the present 65 million tons by opening up the sector to foreign investors. Iran has said it needs $72 billion in foreign investment for 80 major petrochemical projects.
The country aims to diversify its economy that is largely dependent on oil export revenue and make better use of its hydrocarbon reserves by producing petrochemicals with higher value-added.
The petrochemical sector is Iran’s second-most valuable industry after oil and gas.
