"If government funding is allocated, Iran will soon become an exporter of technical knowledge for petrochemical [production],” Managing-Director of the National Petrochemical Company (NPC) Abdolhossein Bayat said on Sunday.
He added that this project could reduce foreign dependency and be considered a way to counter the sanctions imposed on Iran by the West.
Bayat stated that research activities in the petrochemical sector are currently focused on technical knowledge and technology related to processing, catalysts and chemical products.
On January 7, Bayat announced that Iran’s National Development Fund had allocated 3.6 billion dollars to the development of the country’s petrochemical industry.
Iran has expanded the range and volume of its petrochemical production significantly over the past few years, and the NPC has become the second largest producer and exporter of petrochemicals in the Middle East.
The Islamic Republic exported a total of 18.2 million tons of petrochemical and polymer products, worth about 14.2 billion dollars, to more than 60 countries in the previous Iranian calendar year (ended March 19, 2012).
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