Gholamhossein Nejabat, Managing director of National Iranian Petrochemical Company

Iranian petrochemical industry is on the verge of turning 50 and, therefore, is much younger than the oil industry. However, the industry has moved rapidly to achieve its goals and apart from a short period when no major steps were taken for development of the Iranian petrochemical industry, it has grown in spurts since 1991.

From the time that construction of the first petrochemical plant was started in Shiraz in 1958 up to 1978, that is over a period of 20 years, only three petrochemical plants with a total capacity of less than one million tons per year had been established. After the victory of the Islamic Revolution (1979) and during the war with Iraq (1980-88), no considerable measure was taken to develop the industry because most petrochemical installations were located in war zones and the need to reconstruct them and restore their initial capacities left no spare time to be spent on development of the sector.

After the war ended, development of the Iranian petrochemical industry started and the current capacity for production of petrochemical products in the country has approached 35 million tons per year. The figure is expected to hit about 47 million tons by the end of the Iranian year, 1387 (2008-09). In that case, the share of Iran in petrochemical production in the Middle East will rise from the current figure of 25 percent to 29 percent.

Banking on economic advantages of the country, including abundant feed and skillful manpower, the Iranian petrochemical industry has succeeded during the past year to boost its production capacity by about 9 million tons. This has paved the way to produce about 9 billion dollars worth of petrochemicals. Petrochemical exports during the same year were estimated at about 9.5 million tons, worth about 5.9 billion dollars.