On Tuesday, Iranian Oil Minister Bijan Zanganeh said that the country is faring well in oil products and petrochemical products exports despite US sanctions.
He said that Iran has expanded production capacities of the joint oil and gas fields, avoiding crude sales, expanding gas supply, increasing gas exports, supporting domestic manufacturing and knowledge-based firms, as well as countering oil sanctions.
Zanganeh took an example of the South Pars gas field expansion in output. “In 2005, the production in South Pars gas field was 140 million cubic meters that the amount hit 280 million cubic meters in 2015, and in the current year it has reached 700 million cubic meters,” he said.
The minister further elaborated on the production of petrochemical products in avoiding selling crude oil. “We had been able to increase the production of petrochemicals from 12 million tons in 1996 to 66 million tons in 2019 that the amount of which is expandable to about 100 million tons in 2021,” he explained.
Regarding the sale, Iranian petrochemical products were about USD2 billion in 1996, which jumped to USD11 billion in 2013, and hit and about USD15 billion in 2019.
The sale of oil products has also doubled since 2005 even when there are some problems and restrictions due to sanctions.
Zanganeh then moved on to talk about the Gore-Jask pipeline as one of the country’s solutions to overcome sanctions. According to him, the pipeline would be completed by the end of the current year ending on March 20, 2021. It would be able to export one million barrels of crude at that time.
