Addressing a ceremony to break the ground for construction of the plant on Saturday, Behzad Mohammadi said that the most important feature of the Islamabad West Petrochemical Project is that it is Iranian, and added: "The total technology and catalyst of all three parts of methanol, propylene and polypropylene of the project will be developed by researchers of the Petrochemical Research and Technology Company.”

The Deputy Minister of Petroleum stated that the Islamabad-West petrochemical project is one of the strategic projects of the petrochemical industry, and added: “One of the important concerns of this industry is the production of propylene and its derivatives; propylene is a strategic product and it is known in the world as the caviar of the petrochemical industry and the production capacity of this product is currently about 950,000 tons per year in the country.”

He said permits had been issued for construction of plants to bring the production capacity of the item to 4.5 million tons per year.

Mohammadi further said that the plant uses 6 types of catalysts of which 3 had already been produced domestically and the rest were being prepared for mass production in the country.