A special working committee, comprising members of the National Petrochemical Company (NPC)'s general assembly, is to decide whether West Ethylene Pipeline should be transferred to private firms, deputy managing director of the NPC said.
Due to the significance of the matter, the government is the only authority eligible to decide on whether the pipeline should be owned by the government or private sector, Hassan Peyvandi was quoted by Neco News as saying on Saturday.
The oil ministry was tasked with constructing the West Ethylene Pipeline in 2002, and further plans were devised to construct petrochemical complexes along the pipeline in Kohgilouyeh and Boyer-Ahmad, Kermanshah, West Azarbaijan, Kurdestan, Khuzestan, and Hamedan provinces.
The main suppliers of the pipeline are Kavian petrochemical complex in Bushehr Province, and Arvand Petrochemical complex in the southern Khuzestan Province. The feedstock for 11 petrochemical complexes will be supplied through the West Ethylene Pipeline once it's fully operational. It can also be utilized to export petrochemicals to the western and northern neighbors, namely Iraq, Turkey, Georgia, and Armenia.
To implement Article 44 of Iran's Constitution, which authorizes privatization, petrochemical units constructed across the pipeline were transferred to private sector. However, no decision has been made on the pipeline's ownership so far.
The 2,648 km pipeline is designed to transport ethylene from the Pars Special Economic Energy Zone situated in Assalouyeh to West Azarbaijan Province in northwestern Iran. Currently, eleven provinces and 14 petrochemical plants are located on the route of the pipeline.
It is reportedly the longest ethylene transfer pipeline in the world, with a final capacity to transfer 2.5 million tons of ethylene per annum.
The NPC is not able to carry out the project due to lack of funding, deputy oil minister Abbas Shari-Moqaddam said earlier in February, adding that phase one and two of the project will be completed before yearend (March 20).
