TEHRAN - Iran has prepared a ‘special plan’ to export petrochemical products to the U.S., the secretary general of the association of the Iranian petrochemical industry’s employers union, Ahmad Mahdavi, said on Monday.

“A special plan has been devised in order to export petrochemical products at competitive prices to North American countries, even the U.S.,” the Mehr news agency quoted Mahdavi as saying.

The plan is part of an effort to diversify the country’s petrochemical market once sanctions are lifted, he said.

Iran is currently facing no problems for selling petrochemical and polymer products, but the removal of sanctions will cut export costs and will boost advantages for the target markets, Mahdavi said.

He went on to say that parallel with exporting petrochemical products to Europe, exporting such products to Africa and South America I son the agenda.

Iran exported 6.263 million tons of petrochemical products, worth $3.623 billion, in spring, which corresponds to the first quarter of the Iranian calendar year, accounting for 33.34 percent of the country’s total non-oil exports in terms of value. 

Iran plans to increase its annual petrochemical production by 900,000 tons by the end of the current Iranian calendar year (March 19, 2016).

The country’s annual petrochemical output will be doubled to 120 million tons when semi-finished petrochemical projects come on stream.