Sixty development plans in the key petrochemical industry have been prioritized on the basis of their physical progress so far, manager for development affairs at the National Petrochemical Co., Marzieh Shahdaie told Mehr News Agency.
Underscoring the need for a whopping $33 billion to help the projects get off the ground, she said, “Projects which have registered a work-in-progress rate of between 60-100 % have been given higher priority and will be monitored closely. For now six projects fall into this category.
Those with physical progress between 20-60 % are placed in the second group. There are 15 projects in this category which have been provided the necessary funding and are due to go on stream by 2017. Upon completion of the projects 11.5 million tons will be added to the present petrochemical output, which now stands at 60 million tons.”
Projects with progress less than 20% fall into the third category with almost 39 unfinished projects and their completion will double the production capacity of the petrochemical industry. However, their future is presently uncertain because of funding constraints and sanctions-related issues, the NPC official was quoted as saying.
The biggest challenge petrochemical industries have been grappling with in recent years is related to liquidity, according to Shahdaie. Needless to say, feedstock provision, attracting foreign investment and lagging behind advanced states in technical know-how are among other hurdles.
Currently the output from 45 petrochemical units is 60 million tons and account for 36 percent of the total non-oil exports. According to available data, Iran holds 24% of Middle East’s and 4.2% of the world’s petrochemical production capacity.
