Bid Boland Gas Refinery project in the city of Behbahan, Khuzestan Province, will play a significant role in the expansion of the downstream petrochemical sector, the head of National Petrochemical Company said on Tuesday.
Underscoring the significance of the project, Reza Norouz-Zadeh added that the under-construction refinery is of high importance, as it will provide feedstock to an array of petrochemical units in the area, Shana reported.
The refinery will supply the feedstock through a 1,200-kilometer pipeline—known as the West Ethylene Pipeline—that runs from Asalouyeh in the south all the way to West Azarbaijan Province in the northwest.
According to the official, "the refinery, equipped with technical facilities to separate ethane from methane, will also help diversify petrochemical products, a lion's share of which is currently allocated to urea and ammoniac".
The separation of two chemicals will help increase productivity and lower waste.
The NPC chief said the refinery, which had registered a 65% progress in January, will be completed in the current fiscal (started March 21).
"The plan aims to support the downstream petrochemical sector, develop the upstream sector and expand the growth of supplementary industries," he added.
The official noted that the facility's output will equal natural gas produced from two standard phases of South Pars, Iran's mega gas field in the Persian Gulf that is being developed in 24 phases.
Bid Boland's production capacity is slated to stand at 48 million cubic meters per day of natural gas.
It will also produce 1.5 million tons of ethane and 1.5 million tons of propane and butane annually upon completion.
The development plan of the refinery was handed over to Persian Gulf Petrochemical Industries Company.
In 2017, the company reached an agreement with Hitachi to supply the refinery's advanced equipment and technology. The agreement includes the supply of compressors, vapor recovery units and gas storage equipment by the Japanese conglomerate.
Bid Boland is equipped with a modern vapor recovery unit that collects either environmentally hazardous or valuable vapors inside the refining facilities to be reprocessed or destroyed.
Tehran is making efforts to double annual petrochemical production capacity from around 60 million tons by opening up the sector to foreign investors. It has said over $70 billion in foreign investments are needed 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. To boost output capacity, improvement and optimization of several petrochemical plants are underway in different provinces.
Two major projects, namely Marjan Petrochemical Complex—aka 7th Methanol Project—in Phase 2 of South Pars in Asalouyeh as well as Kaveh Methanol Company in Bushehr Province with a capacity of 1.65 and 2.3 million tons per year will become fully operational in summer.
