With the imminent completion of several of the NPC's development projects, including olefins no. 6, PTA/PET-1 and aromatics no. 3, which are under construction in Bandar Imam Petrochemical Special Economic Zone in the near future, Iran Petrochemical Commercial Co. (IPCC) is close to finalize term contracts for marketing products from the facilities.
IPCC is already in final stage of talks with leading companies from South Korea, China, Japan, Europe and Middle East for methanol, benzene and paraxylene long-term supply contracts for 2003-2007.
IPCC expects to export 4.5 million tonnes of various petrochemicals from NPC's facilities by the end of the current Iranian calendar year on 20 March 2003.
NPC anticipates that its output reaches some 14 million tonnes of which fifty percent will be available for sales domestically and internationally.





NPC expects to export 3 million tonnes of methanol by 2005 when its two new methanol projects come on stream.
Iran Petrochemical Commercial Company (IPCC)'s chairman and managing director Mohammad Ehtiati told Dewitt Asian Conference on Global Methanol and MTBE markets which was held in Singapore that NPC already has two methanol plants with a total output capacity of 750,000 tonne/year. The output from Kharg 660,000 tonne/year methanol facility is totally exported. A 90,000 tonne/year plant in Shiraz supplies the local consumption while its remaining excess capacity is exported.

Ehtiati said that with the completion of the new facilities, NPC's total methanol output would be boosted to 3.4m tonne/year of which 400,000 tonne/year will be consumed locally while the rest will be exported. NPC's current methanol capacity is 750,000 tonne/year.
China is targeted to be IPPC's biggest export market for methanol. The country is expected to consume 32% of the output from NPC, Europe and Brazil 21%, South Korea 13%, Japan 12%, India 5%, Turkey 4% and 13% for other Asian countries.



In order to market the surge of petrochemicals that will come onto global markets from the NPC's projects in the next few years, the company's marketing and sales arm, IPCC, has drawn up a strategic plan to increase its presence and share in the global petrochemicals market. In this line, IPCC is considering over forming ventures with qualified foreign companies in the field of liquid petrochemicals storage and tanking. It also seeks to use bonded warehouses transactions to serve Chinese market with greater efficiency and higher netback prices. The strategy will particularly help IPCC to get rid of deep-sea shipment problem for gaining further access to the Far East markets.



Installation work for IPCC's storage facility is expected to begin soon. The facility consists of 17 tanks which are being built at Bandar Imam Petrochemical Special Economic Zone (Petzone) to store products from NPC's projects under construction at the zone.
The tanks have a capacity of over 120,000m3.
A local company, Energy Engineering and Industries is responsible for the project's design and engineering activities.
The facility also includes eight warehouses.
NPC's subsidiary, Petrochemical Industries Development Management Co. (PIDMCO) is responsible for implementing the facility.