Oil & Gas

Iran, as the energy pole in the Middle East, has significant reserves of hydrocarbon resources, with currently more than 712 billion barrels of oil reserves in the country and an estimated 101 billion barrels of residual oil reserves.
Moreover, Iran’s natural gas reserves account for 16.6 percent of the world’s reserves, 49 percent of Middle East reserves and 38 percent of reserves in oil exporting countries. At the same time, aggregation of Iranian gas and oil reserves reflects the fact that Iran holds the first place in the world’s hydrocarbon reserves. Therefore, Iran has a great potential for oil and gas potential. As a consequent, there is a significant opportunity to invest in industrial/chemical parks due to the abundant sources of energy, as well as and the low cost of natural gas and electricity in Iran.

Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR)

Oil production is separated into three phases: primary, secondary and tertiary. Primary oil recovery is limited to hydrocarbons that naturally rise to the surface, or those that use artificial lift devices, such as pump jacks. Secondary recovery employs water and gas injection, displacing the oil and driving it to the surface. The way to further increase oil production is through the tertiary recovery method which is known as Enhanced Oil Recovery (abbreviated EOR). Although more expensive to employ on a field, EOR can increase production from a well to up to 75% recovery. EOR implement various techniques such as three primary techniques including thermal recovery, gas injection, and chemical injection.
Thermal recovery insert heat to the reservoir to reduce the viscosity of the oil. Steam is applied to the reservoir many times and consequently thins the oil and enhances oil ability to flow.
Chemical injection EOR helps to free trapped oil within the reservoir. This method insert long-chained molecules (called polymers) into the reservoir to increase the efficiency of water flooding or boost the effectiveness of surfactants.
Gas injection used as a tertiary method of recovery involves injecting natural gas, nitrogen or carbon dioxide into the reservoir. The gases can either expand and push gases through the reservoir, or mix with or dissolve within the oil, decreasing viscosity and increasing flow.
Carbon dioxide EOR (CO2-EOR) is the method that is gaining the most popularity. While initial CO2-EOR developments used naturally occurring carbon dioxide deposits, technologies have been developed to inject CO2 created as byproducts from industrial purposes.
We have proposed a comprehensive package for promotion and advancement in EOR projects. Our expertise study about burning extremely large volume of natural gas and the use of combustion gas to maintain pressure and EOR of oil fields.

PVC production from Acetylene route

PVC is the world’s third-most widely produced synthetic plastic polymer, after polyethylene and polypropylene. Almost all VCM is used to produce PVC and global VCM/PVC consumption was about 43 million tpa in 2015. VCM can be produced from acetylene and ethylene. Ethylene route has several limitations, including restrictions on access to the pipeline, as well as the volume of ethylene produced in the country. While the acetylene route does not have these restrictions and it can be used anywhere in the country to produce PVC.
ICPDC has introduced for the first time in Iran an “acetylene route” that does not have the limitations of the ethylene route and can be used anywhere in the country to produce PVC.
Acetylene can be produced from natural gas, coal or extracted from cracker ethylene. Simultaneously with the acetylene production from natural gas through partial oxidation (POX) technology, a syngas mixture is obtained as a by-product, which can be used to produce methanol or other syngas derivatives (like MEG, formaldehyde, ammonia, acetic acid).
Methanol is an important link in the petrochemical value chain. It can be used as an intermediate or final product. One of objectives pursued in the sixth Five-Year Economic Development Plan would be to develop downstream methanol projects like formaldehydes, MTO, MTP, DME, MTBE, PMMA, etc.
ICPDC would study, design, develop, and give advice on industries/ chemical parks based on methanol and implement the projects that complete part of the methanol downstream rings of the country. Considering the abundant resources, cheap energy, and easy access to the seas in Iran, we believe that completion of value chain could be an essential way for our country’s economic development.