Addressing a ceremony to launch a number of major energy projects in the southwestern province of Khuzestan on Friday, Morteza Shahmirzaei said that the country’s propylene production capacity was planned to hit 14 million tons per year by 2033.

He added: "Currently, the petrochemical industry has become a mature and leading industry in the value chain of the oil industry, with the production capacity in this industry reaching more than 90 million tons per year and the sales value of its products reaching $25 billion last year."

The NPC CEO continued: “It is expected that the export of petrochemical products will earn about 18 billion dollars for the country this year.”

According to Shahmirzaei, every year a part of the country's hard currency goes out of the country due to the import of petrochemicals that are not produced domestically, which are more important among the imported products of the propylene chain, because they include more than 70% of the imported petrochemical products.

Emphasizing that NPC is focused on the development of value chain projects in order to supply imported products and reduce dependence, and helps investors to solve the challenges of implementing these projects, he stated: “Supplying propylene for value chain projects in this area is a big challenge because the demand for this product in the country is much higher than its production.”

The official, stating that the production capacity of propylene in Iran is about 1 million tons per year, said: “At the current stage, all the propylene produced in the petrochemical industry is consumed in its downstream units, but the amount required by the propylene consuming units is in the nominal capacity.”

He went on to add that 35 propylene production plants have been defined which will bring the item’s production capacity to 12 million tons per year by 2033.