Iran Opens First Oil Products, Petrochemicals Bourse

TEHRAN (AFP)–Iran, OPEC’s number two crude oil producer, Sunday inaugurated its first exchange for oil products and petrochemicals, in a bid to become a major player in the global downstream industry.

Iran hopes that its oil goods exchange can lead the way for a domestic downstream industry to match its upstream crude oil production, the country’s main foreign currency revenue winner.


“We have been a good seller (of crude oil) and now we have a higher objective to have a share in the oil trade,” Oil Minister Gholam Hossein Nozari told reporters.

Iran says it ranks second in the region after Saudi Arabia in terms of production of petrochemicals at 22 million metric tons a year.

But it has failed to gain a significant share in the world export market because of state control of its petrochemical industry and state subsidies.

“The objective is to make transactions (of oil products) transparent, create competition and motives for investment,” the oil minister said.

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