The Mou was signed on Tuesday on the sidelines of the "Technology Transfer and Local Production of Refining, Petrochemical and Gas Catalysts Conference" in Tehran.  

The purpose of signing the memorandum of understanding is the transfer of technical knowledge of four groups of catalysts including isomerization, reforming, hydrotreating, and superclass.

Up to now, the production of 92 types of oil industry-needed catalysts has been localized unless five catalysts four of which will be produced locally based on the signing Mou with the Russian company Antarx.

The managing director of the National Iranian Oil Refining and Distribution Company (NIORDC), Jalil Salari told the conference on Tuesday that after successfully producing a great part of oil industry catalysts at home, Iran now enjoys the potential to export the catalysts to meet the neighboring countries' needs.

Elsewhere in his remarks, he said that the country was currently reliant on domestically made catalysts noting that the country’s need for catalysts is estimated at 26 thousand tons even though the needs are on the rise mainly due to launching upgrading fuel oil qualification units at oil refineries, a process that may require further cooperation between Iranian knowledge-based companies and the foreign partners.

 NIORDC managing director continued: We are hoping to pave the way for producing other catalysts at home through a competitive process, and at the same time to export domestically produced catalysts, specifically to the neighboring countries.

He said that a memorandum of understanding was on the verge of finalization that could pave the way for producing groups 5 and 6 of catalysts at home.