Participants at an international conference on investment opportunities in Iran's petrochemical downstream industries explored the trends and outlooks for the development of the industries.

The NPC director of planning & development, Mohammad Hassan Peyvandi, told the two-day conference, which was held on 6-7 March in Kish Island, South of Iran, that NPC's development programs have spelled the growth of the local downstream petrochemical sectors. Peyvandi said as the NPC's programs began to yield results, downstream capacities grew in their wake and domestic demand for petrochemicals increased substantially. With NPC focusing its sights on maximizing utilization of natural gas resources, building world-scale facilities and attracting domestic investment for the development of both up and downstream industries, Peyvandi noted, further investment in upstream industries boosts investment in downstream industries and consumption of petrochemical products in the domestic market.
He said NPC has drawn up a strategy to catalyze the development of the downstream industries in the petrochemical sector by establishing the "Petrochemical Downstream Development Co.", a 50-50 investment between NPC and the Ministry of Industry, establishing the Downstream Development Office and setting up a special committee in NPC tasked with taking care of appraising and allocating feedstock to the downstream projects. Based on the Industrial Development & Renovation Organization of Iran (IDRO)'s request and the approval of the NPC board of directors, NPC conditionally allocates feedstock to private sector projects. The allocation, is valid for 6 up to 12 months and will be subject to the establishment of a company for implementing the project and submitting the respective documents and contracts to NPC.
The committee has so far allocated feedstock to 13 private sector projects including: