Iranian President Seyed Mohammad Khatami visited Assaluyeh where the large South Pars gas field and several world-scale petrochemical projects are being developed.Speaking at a news conference following his visit to the sites, President Khatami said phase one of the South Pars gas field development showed 79% physical progress while progress at phase two stood at 87.3%. President Khatami, who had also visited the site in 1998, praised the progress that has been made since his last trip to the region saying that there was a "world of difference, endeavor and creativity between the South Pars gas field in 1998 and the one in 2002".
President Khatami stressed that it was necessary to develop projects for utilizing the oil and gas reserves in the region in order to create value-added products. He reiterated that the petrochemical projects in Assaluyeh are proposed in line with this policy adding that all the petrochemical projects in the region would be completed by 2005.
Assaluyeh is located on the northern coast of the Persian Gulf. South Pars gas field, jointly owned by Iran and Qatar, is the world's largest independent gas field. It has gas-in-place reserves of 436TCF representing 8% of the world's total reserves and 40% of Iran's proven reserves. It also has approximately 17 billion barrels of condensates.
The field will be developed in various phases with each phase yielding some 26million cubic meters of gas and 40 000 barrels of condensates per day.
Gas from the South Pars field has a relatively high content of C2+, over 8.5%, and considerable amount of gas condensates. Ethane from phases one,two and three of the development is dedicated to several world-scale petrochemical facilities including a methanol, an aromatic, a centralized utility, an ammonian/urea, a GTL and two olefin facilities.





The Head of Expediency Council Ayatollah Hashemi Rafsanjani visited NPC's projects and facilities in Bandar Imam and Assaluyeh saying that paying further attention to petrochemical industry will lead Iran to a win-win situation. He said Iran is well positioned to develop its petrochemical sector "Given the country's gas reserves, availability of qualified workforce and being situated next to international waterways".
Ayatollah Rafsanjani added that during his term as the country's president it was said that Iran could produce 30 million tonnes of petrochemicals annually "while some argued that the figure can be even more than that, but what I had not heard of was that this capacity growth could be achieved in less than 20 years or rather by 2012." He gave his encouragement to the NPC's plans to develop the country's petrochemical industry and lauded its achievements.
NPC President, who accompanied the Head of Expediency Council during his visit to Mahshahr and Assaluyeh, told Ayatollah Hashemi Rafsanjani that NPC is expected to have an output capacity of over 38m tonne/year of various petrochemicals by 2005.
Significant capacity additions are planned at Special Petrochemical Economic Zone (Petzone) in southwest of Iran and Assaluyeh. Nematzadeh added that NPC's projects in Petzone would produce ethylene, polyethylene (PE), polypropylene (PP), paraxylene (PX), benzene, ethylene glycol (EG), polyethylene terephthalate (PET), styrene and methanol.
Nematzadeh said NPC's export in 1989 was $29m while the figure hiked to $830m in 2000. He expressed hope that export revenues reach $1bn in 2002.
NPC President said with the implementation of petchem projects NPC seeks to play a major role in Iran's non-oil exports, supply feedstock and raw materials to the down-stream industries and increasing its share of the global petrochemicals markets.



Gulf Fertilizer Corporation (Gulfert) periodic meeting was held on 22 January 2002 in IPCC with delegates from Iran, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and United Arab Emirates.
At the meeting, the delegates discussed the impacts of the post-September 11th events in the US on fertilizers prices especially ammonia.
They underscored the importance of regional cooperation to prevent any harm to the interests of the producing countries. They also discussed ways of collaboration for supplying ammonia to end users in the Q1 and Q2 of 2002.
Gulf Fertilizer Corporation (Gulfert), a non-official organization of Persian Gulf producers of fertilizers including Iran, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait and United Arab Emirates convene every three-months to coordinate their supply policies and define strategies to maximize their profit margins.
The next Gulfert meeting will be in March 2002 in Saudi Arabia.



A senior delegation from the South African Sasol headed by the company's executive director, Pat Davis met NPC President on February 4th in Tehran.
The Sasol's team accompanied the South African government delegation to the 6th Irano-South African joint commission, which was held in Tehran on 4th and 5th of February 2002.
In the meeting with Mr. Nematzadeh and senior NPC officials, Sasol and NPC discussed ways of possible mutual cooperation in gas-to-liquids (GTL).



Sasol team also met Petroleum Minister Bijan Namdar Zanganeh and senior officials from the Iranian oil and gas sectors seeking to advance bilateral collaboration.





A French delegation headed by Mr. Jan-Francois Stoll, General Director of Economic and Trade Department of the Ministry of Economy, Finance and Industry visited gas and petrochemicals development activities at Assaluyeh. During the visit, Mr. Stoll was briefed on the latest status of different phases of the South Pars gas field development as well as the NPC's olefins, aromatics and methanol projects.
Mr. Stoll was accompanied by the French Ambassador and economic and commercial counsellors of the French Embassy in Tehran.



Meanwhile, in a separate visit, the French Ambassador to Tehran Mr. Farncois Nicoullaud toured Bandar Imam Petrochemical Complex. He visited the complexes' plants and was provided with information on their technologies, processes and capacities as well as BIPC's environmental and quality management programs.





A team from the German company BASF visited NPC's projects which are being developed at Petzone and Assaluyeh. The BASF team comprised of Arthur Hoehn, senior manager, Eastern Europe, Africa and West Asia, Mr. Kurt-Henning Sthamer, managing director of BASF Iran AG and Mr. Shahab Taebi from BASF Iran AG. They also visited BIPC in the city of Mahshahr and projects of the phases 2 and 3 of the South Pars gas field development in Assaluyeh.