Addressing the commissioning ceremony of two petrochemical plans, Dr. Masoud Mirkazemi said the scheme to increase gasoline production tested successfully last year and showed that the country’s petrochemical complexes are able to meet gasoline needs of the country. He went on to say that we can say that petrochemical complexes are capable to meet gasoline needs in extraordinary situations.
Elsewhere in his remarks the petroleum minister said building a number of refineries are under way, part of them will come on stream before the end of the current Iranian calendar year 1389 (20 March 2011).
Mirkazemi stressed that up to March 2013, 170 million liters of gasoline would be produced while gasoline consumption of the country would be no more than 66 million liters per day, so Iran will be a big gasoline exporter at that time.
According to mirkazemi by achieving self sufficiency in gasoline production and other oil products, foreigners can not put pressure on Iran, because not only we face no problem to meet needed fuels but also have great potentials to expand petrochemical complexes, to build oil refineries and gas processing plants and to develop oil fields.
Referring to the commissioning of the second phase of the Pardis petrochemical complex in Assaluyeh, Mirkazemi noted that Iran is the second biggest producer of urea fertilizer in the world and ranks the first in the Middle East.
According to Mirkazemi engineers and specialist of the country are working hard that resembles to war scenes, having achieved innovations and have implemented unprecedented plans in Assaluyeh which have resulted to mounting petrochemical production capacity to 84.5 million tons in 2009 from 15.8 million tons in 2005.
On petrochemical products exports, the minister of petroleum said exports have raised from 5.2 million tons in 2005 to 14.8 million tons in 2009 while the worth of the petrochemical exports during the corresponding period have increased from 2.3 billion to 9.2 billion dollars.
On the development of remaining phases of the South Pars gas field, Mirkazemi noted that we have concluded contracts to develop all the phases and in next three years, we will be able to extract 700 million cubic meters of gas and 1.2 million condensates per day.
He concluded that by development of the phases, South Pars revenue would be nearly double the revenue from the oil exports.