NPC has awarded the contract for the Kermanshah ammonia and urea project to a consortium of Japan's Kawasaki Heavy Industries and Tomen and Iran's Namvaran. The consortium won the contract in the face of a strong international competition. The contract calls for the provision of licenses, basic and detailed engineering, supply of equipment and technical assistance for the projects, which will be built near the city of Kermanshah, the capital of Kermanshah province west of Iran.



The complex will process 65,000 Nm3 per hour of natural gas to produce 1,200 tonnes of ammonia and 2,000 tonnes of urea granulate per day. The urea will be largely consumed locally, while the surplus will be exported.The consortium will use the technology of low energy ammonia process (M.W. Kellogg license) and Activated Methyl De-ethanol Amine (AMDEA) CO2 removal (BASF license) for ammonia plant and pool condenser (Stamicarbon B.V. license) and urea granulation Hydro Fertilizer Technology (HFT license) for the urea plant. The required utilities and offsite facilities will be provided totally within the complex, which also includes 20% spare capacity for future expansion.
Namvaran, the Iranian partner of the consortium will provide the detailed engineering and those pieces of equipment that are manufactured locally. The complex is scheduled to be completed in 36 months. With a 33% stake, NPC is Kermanshah Petrochemical Industries Co. (KPIC)'s major shareholder. It will lead the implementation of the project.
KPIC will produce 396,000 tonne/year ammonia and 660,000 tonne/year urea.




The contract to build a large-scale ammonia plant at Razi Petrochemical Company southwest of Iran has been awarded to the Iranian contractor Petrochemical Industries Design and Engineering Co.(PIDEC).
PIDEC beat off competition from Germany's Krupp Uhde and Italy's Snamprogetti that had also taken part in the bidding.It will use technology from the Swiss company Ammonia Casale for the 2,050 tonne/day (676,500 tonne/year) ammonia facility.
Detailed engineering and procurement will be carried out by PIDEC. Razi is already operating two ammonia units, which have a total combined capacity of 660,000 tonne/year.





The NPC subsidiary Shahid Tondguyan Petrochemical Co (STPC) has decided to increase the bottle grade capacity of its first polyethylene terephthalate (PET-1) plant to 177,000 tonne/year. The plant was initially planned to produce 60,000 tonne/year bottle grade PET. The project's overall output capacity of 412,000 tonne/year of PET will remain unchanged. The fiber grade capacity, however; will be changed from an earlier 352,000 tonne/year to 235,000 tonne/year.Buhler of Switzerland will carry out the engineering and procurement (EP) activities for the increase while the Iranian contractor OIEC will cover the construction activities.
PET-1 is already under construction at Petrochemical Special Economic Zone (Petzone) in southwest of Iran. Meanwhile, STPC awarded a contract to Germany's Autefa for automatic handling system of its second PET.
The system is able to doff, transport, store and pack automatically partially-oriented yarn (POY) filament bobbins. It can also transport and store the staple bales in the automatic warehouse.
The system is equipped with online laboratory.





Work is progressing on schedule at Pars petrochemical port in Assaluyeh. Construction work has already started on breakwaters.
Consisting of 14 berths, the port will be able to accommodate ships of up to 60,000 tonne deadweight, load and unload 27-30m tonnes of petrochemicals annually, including 5-6m tonnes of solid products and 22-24m tonnes of liquid petrochemicals.
NPC picked up the local company Khatam-ol-Anbia Construction Group as the engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contractor for the petrochemical port. The Turkish company STFA has been appointed as the sub-contractor.



Workshops at the site are being equipped with necessary equipment and machinery to accelerate implementation activities. Extraction and transport of stones and rocks with required specifications from mines in the area to the site of breakwaters forms a lion's share of the construction activities. To obtain useful rocks and stones, so far prospecting and exploration activities have been conducted within a radius of 60km of the site. As a result, twenty mines have been reopened or excavated.Simultaneous with implementation activities, detailed engineering work is in progress.





NPC's contract with the French company Technip for building a 1.345m tonne/year ethylene cracker, which is part of NPC's Olefins No 10, has come into force.
The facility is under construction in Assaluyeh.
It is due onstream in 2005.Under the contract, Technip will carry out the engineering work, supply equipment and materials, and supervise construction and commissioning. It will also provide its ethylene technology and proprietary furnaces.The Iranian company Nargan will perform the engineering and supply equipment and materials of local origin.
Jam Petrochemical Company, an NPC subsidiary is responsible for construction, project execution and running the plant.





NPC and the German consortium of Deutsche Gesellschaft Technische Zusammenarbeit (GTZ) GmbH and ABB Utility Automation GmbH (ABB) signed a contract to build a training center at Bandar Imam Petrochemical Zone (Petzone).
Based on the contract, the ABB/GTZ consortium will provide support services for constructing the center. The services include planning and design for the center, providing assistance for preparing technical specification of training equipment and facilities, supervising equipment delivery and commissioning, coordinating manufacturers' equipment-based training. It will also render assistance for course development, and facility maintenance.
In November 2001, a team of ABB/GTZ visited the Petzone. Following the visit, NPC and ABB/GTZ signed a memorandum of understanding to cooperate in the setting up of a training center for NPC.



The London branch of Societe Generale has recently signed a Euro 25m structured export financing with NPC. The deal is backed by ECGD, and is the first such structured financing for Iran to be supported by the UK export credit agency.
The loan was arranged on a buyer credit basis to finance the supply of air separation units by Air Products PLC to Fajr Petrochemical Company, a subsidiary of NPC.
For ECGD this is a landmark deal in the sense that security for the financing takes the form of assignment of proceeds from the sale of petrochemical products exported by NPC companies to major European off-takers. Similar structures have been used successfully by other European export credit agencies in recent times for NPC, but this was a "first" for ECGD.
Appointed as lead arranger by NPC, SG syndicated the transaction amongst a small club of London banks including Bank Sepah International plc.Alan Paton, Head of Export Finance in London said that SG was particularly pleased to conclude this deal - "our bank has a long history of arranging export credits for NPC from other European countries, and we have now widened the scope of our relations with NPC to include the ECGD program. We are very hopeful that the structure of this transaction will form a useful template for similar NPC deals in the future."