Iran exports 16ml tons of petrochemical products to 60 countries

Iran exported more than 16 million tons of different petrochemical products to 60 world countries in the last Iranian year (ended on March 21), a senior Iranian energy official said. “Iran gained $12bln of revenues by exporting over 16mln tons of petrochemical products to 60 countries last year,” Managing Director of the National Petrochemical Company (NPC) Abdolhossein Bayat said. He noted that NPC is currently pursuing two objectives of diversifying products and finding new export destinations for its products. “Today the capacity of the country’s petrochemical output has exceeded 60mln tons …,” Bayat added. Earlier this month, Bayat downplayed the effectiveness of the western sanctions against Iran, and said Tehran has adopted and implemented different strategies to bypass the embargos and has no worries about exports of its petrochemical products. “Although we have been under the US sanctions for over 34 years, we grew even more vigilant when the new wave of tougher sanctions was raised by the US and fortunately we succeeded in adopting fundamental and strategic measures to bypass the embargos,” Bayat told FNA. He said that expanding Iran’s cargo fleet to increase exports of petrochemical products instead of crude oil, indigenizing petrochemical production technologies and producing millions of products from crude oil in a way that they cannot be easily sanctioned by the western states are among the measures adopted by the oil ministry to counter the embargos. Bayat underlined that “Iran is not concerned about export” of its petrochemical products since it has various customers across the world while there is also a growing demand for home-made petrochemical products in the Iranian market. The US blacklisted eight companies in Iran's petrochemical industry earlier this month. Most of the companies are private. The petrochemical companies owned or controlled by the Iranian government that are on the Treasury Department list include Bandar Imam Petrochemical Co, Bou Ali Sina Petrochemical Co and Mobin Petrochemical Co. Bayat said the new sanctions have targeted products of some Iranian petrochemical plants, including Tabriz petrochemical complex, whose products are consumed only in the domestic market.