Stage Set for Bigger Mokran Oil Role

Both a refinery and a petrochemical plant, the facility will have a capacity of 350,000 barrels of crude oil per day and will produce gasoline, diesel, jet fuel, sulfur, butadiene, ethylene propylene polymer products, and monoethylene glycol, among others, IRNA reported.

Mokran is a coastal strip along the Persian Gulf and the Sea of Oman, stretching from Hormozgan to Sistan-Baluchestan Province in Iran and highly suitable for the expansion of the petrochemical industry.

Another petrochemical complex is under construction along Mokran coasts in Chabahar in Sistan-Baluchestan Province.

After completion, Chabahar on the southeastern tip will become Iran’s third petrochemical hub after Mahshahr in the southwest and Asalouyeh in the south.

The first phase of the complex is expected to come online next year. It is being built on 1,200 hectares and when the first phase is operational it will produce 8.5 million tons per annum, including 1.65 million tons of methanol. Part of the output will serve as feedstock for petrochemical companies plus downstream industries and the rest will be exported.

Petrochemical complexes along Mokran will help improve the economy of the underdeveloped Sistan-Baluchestan and Hormozgan provinces.

Moreover, 20 hectares of land in Shahid Beheshti Port in Chabahar, about 20 kilometers from Mokran Petrochemical Complex, has been considered as a transport terminal.

Chabahar is 645 kilometers south of the provincial capital Zahedan in the southeast.

Iran's massive crude oil and natural gas reserves have contributed to economic growth in the southwestern regions in the Persian Gulf, but areas bordering the Oman Sea in the southeast have hardly benefited from the wealth. 

Stretching along the Oman Sea, the Mokran region has not developed into the expected trade and shipping center, save for the port city of Jask that is gradually turning into an oil, gas and petrochemical terminal.

New oil loading facilities in Mokran will significantly reduce shipping costs and spare lengthy voyage through the Strait of Hormoz all the way to Iran's main oil and gas terminals, in Asalouyeh, Kharg Island and Mahshahr on the westernmost side of the Persian Gulf.

Currently under construction, Jask Export Terminal is due to be completed by next March. When ready, it will store 30 million barrels of crude oil and export one million.

Kharg Terminal off the Persian Gulf has been Iran’s main oil export terminal for decades. Jask will be another major site with the advantage that oil tankers need not pass through the narrow and permanently clogged Strait of Hormuz.

The operation to lay offshore pipelines for Jask Oil Terminal started in January. The project includes construction of two 36-inch offshore pipelines stitching over 12km.

The terminal is to be fed by Goureh-Jask oil pipeline stretching over 1,000 km from Goureh in Bushehr Province, to Jask in Hormuzgan Province.

The major project is on track while Iran’s oil exports have declined since former US President Donald Trump, the defamed imposed tough new economic sanctions after abandoning the 2015 historic Iran nuclear deal with world powers in the summer of 2018.

Official data on Iran’s oil exports in the past 30 months is not available, but unofficial reports suggest that it has fallen to 500,000 barrels per day from 2.4 million bpd before the sanctions.