TEHRAN (Tasnim) – Iran’s Oil Minister Bijan Namdar Zanganeh said the pace of progress in the petroleum, gas, refinement and petrochemical industries in Iran has quickened so sharply that new contracts and projects would be unveiled every two weeks.

“From now on, once every two weeks, we will have a new inauguration or the signing of a new contract, which shows that not only have the sanctions failed to halt Iran’s industrial progress, but also our pace of development of the oil, gas, refining and petrochemical (industries) has accelerated,” Zanganeh said on Saturday.

He made the comments at a ceremony held for signing a contract to develop the offshore ‘Balal’ gas field, located in the Persian Gulf near the giant South Pars gas field.

The minister also said that all platforms in 27 standard phases of the South Pars gas field will be held in place by March 2020, adding that all refineries of the gas field, except for the refinery of Phase 11, will come on stream and help produce offshore gas with the maximum capacity in the 27 phases.

Iran is now on the verge of the second leap in the petrochemical industry that would increase the annual output to above 100 million tons, Zanganeh said, adding that a third leap is expected to further raise the production capacity of the country’s petrochemical industry to more than 150 million tons.

In May, Managing Director of Iran’s National Petrochemical Company (NPC) Behzad Mohammadi unveiled plans for a big rise in the production of petrochemicals, saying the annual income from domestic petrochemical output is expected to hit $25 billion within the next two years.

In August 2018, NPC officials said Iran’s petrochemical industry was “unsanctionable” and that the exports would continue on schedule despite the US sanctions.

Washington imposed new sanctions on Tehran after withdrawing from the 2015 Iran nuclear deal in May 2018.