Addressing a virtual ceremony to launch three major oil and petrochemical projects on Monday, Mr. Zangeneh said: “We are in a good situation in all joint fields compared to our neighbors; production capacity of crude oil in the joint fields of West of Karoun has increased from 70,000 barrels per day to 400,000 barrels."

He said Azar and the ethane recovery unit of Kangan Petro-refinery were financed by $2.7 billion.

Pointing out that the Azar joint field in Dehloran region of Ilam Province is the first project to be inaugurated on Monday, he said Azar field was one of the joint fields that had not been developed and its output was zero.

He added that the Azar field project has been implemented in two phases, the first phase of which was implemented with a daily production of 30,000 barrels in May 2017.

“The second phase of this project has come online with a daily production of 65,000 barrels since December last year,” he added.

He announced the cumulative output of the field at about 36 million barrels of oil, and said $1.6 billion of the cost of the development plan of this field has been returned.

Zangeneh further added that the ethane recovery unit of Kangan Petro-refinery was financed with $1 billion with a production capacity of 3.5 million tons of output per year.

Addressing the President, he said that this project in the petrochemical production chain is a parent project of feedstock, adding that the total capacity of feedstock projects of petrochemical units that have been inaugurated this [calendar] year is 11.2 million tons per year.

The Iranian Minister of Petroleum further announced the opening of a petrochemical feedstock supply project in the coming weeks, and noted: “Ethane recovery units of Bushehr, Bidboland Persian Gulf Refinery, Kangan Petro-Refinery and Parsian Sepehr Refinery in Assaluyeh will come on stream this year or the next. The NGL 3100 and 3200 projects will also come online next year, too.”

He stated that four projects were implemented in the downstream of the Kangan Petro-Refinery: a 1-million-ton olefin unit and three 300,000-ton polyethylene production units with an investment of $1.5 billion with a total progress of 40%.

The Minister of Petroleum said: "If there were no sanctions, all these projects could have been implemented together, and the reason for the delay in implementation of these projects is the imposition of sanctions."

At the end of his address, Mr. Zangeneh said that Kian Petrochemical Project was to be financed by Parsian Oil and Gas Holding as well as Petrofarhang Holding by nearly 2 billion dollars of investment.

Noting that the contract for implementation of this project has been signed for several months and its initial operation has begun, the Minister of Petroleum added: "An important feature of this project is receiving a set of combined liquid and gas feedstocks with a capacity of 2.5 million tons. This is a huge project and we have four projects of this kind.”