From the Four Corners of the World

Holding a major international conference requires a round-the-clock head coordinator. As the previous year, this task was shouldered by NPC’s Director for Planning and Development, Mohammad-Hassan Peyvandi. Serving for the second year as the IPF Secretary, Peyvandi kept his presentation just as a welcome address and preferred to run the errands of the forum. However, his famous pre-event statement echoed in our brief interview at the forum, “Yes, petrochemical industry has a high value-added and is very profitable. But what good will come out of just reiterating for the next five hundred years that our natural gas reserves rank the second in the world? This issue is important only when it is used to boost our economy and national welfare.”

Let’s Stage the Forum: Encouraged by the global enthusiasm toward its two previous forums, the National Petrochemical Company staged “IPF 2001” in a much larger scale. This year, high-ranking officials, executives, businessmen, scientists and journalists attended IPF from all around the world. This is nearly 15 percent greater than the IPF 2000 attendance. The number of international and domestic companies represented also shows a remarkable growth.
The theme chosen for this year’s forum was “New Visions in Petrochemical Industry”. Under this title, speakers addressed such issues as petrochemical industry outlook, management and marketing prospects, investment potentials and regulations, major trends in research and development activities, feedstock availability and prospects for regional cooperation. In addition, participants were welcome to voice their views concerning the predominant trends in shaping the future of the petrochemical industry.

Another Accomplishment: On the opening day around 900 people attended the forum including 800 petrochemical experts and around 50 proprietor companies of technology and technical know-how. The conference was very successful in its scientific aspects and in providing an interaction between industrialists, bankers and various nationalities. One of the key features of the forum was that we had notable participants from 42 countries coming from all the five continents around the world.

Another Challenge: A small chemical fertilizer unit was commissioned in Shiraz some 36 years ago and today, the country is looking at the ceiling of 16 million tons of production capacity. This is undoubtedly a noticeable growth. However, development is essentially the only way to the petrochemical industry’s survival and we have taken this into account by formulating a five-phase development plan. Phases one and two were integrated to speed up the process and development will continue on schedule relying on such competitive advantages as suitable feedstock, inexpensive and specialized workforce, plus the facilities provided at the Bandar-Imam located ‘Petzone’. We are hopeful that by the end of the Third Economic Development Plan, our 0.5% of world market share would top 2%. Let us not forget that other countries won’t be standing still in this period. They will be making their own progress and the Iranian petrochemical industry will be aiming at the challenge of getting ahead in this endeavor.