A new private sector facility to produce oxidized bitumen was inaugurated by Minister of Cooperatives, Labor and Social Welfare, Ali Rabiei, in the southwestern city of Abadan which will increase the country's bitumen output by 620,000 tons per year, IRNA reported. The construction of the facility started five years ago by Pasargad Oil Company with a 450-billion-rial investment and was designed and implemented by domestic experts. The company, which is the biggest bitumen producer in the Middle East, managed to increase the output by 25%. According to the minister, more development projects for bitumen are underway, including expanding the bitumen storage capacity to 35,000 tons from the current 15,000 through building four 5,000-ton tanks, dredging operations, expanding the transit network for bitumen and modernizing bitumen packing methods and drum production. Iran is the seventh global producer and the fourth biggest exporter of bitumen with 25 countries from Middle East, South Asia, Africa and Europe in the export list.
