By HASHEM KALANTARI

Iran is targeting Asia’s growing demand for refined oil products with a $2.8 billion project to add 480,000 bpd of processing capacity at the Siraf refinery on the nation’s Persian Gulf coast.

OPEC’s fifth-biggest crude producer plans to process condensate, a light oil extracted along with natural gas, into exportable products at the new refining units, Ali-Reza Sadegh-Abadi, managing director of Siraf Refineries Infrastructure Co., said in an interview in Tehran. The project is to be completed in three years, he said.

Private Iranian companies will use their own funds to build eight processing plants, each with a capacity of 60,000 bpd, said Sadegh-Abadi, who is coordinating the project. The Siraf complex is in the coastal city of Assaluyeh near the South Pars offshore gas field.

Iran is boosting gas output from South Pars to meet a growing domestic need for fuel. Sales of condensate from South Pars currently boost Iran’s crude oil exports, which are constrained by international sanctions. Condensate exports are unaffected to buyers permitted under US sanctions to buy Iran crude. They doubled last year to about 200,000 bpd and contributed to total Iranian oil shipments in April of about 1.3 million bpd, the International Energy Agency said in two reports this year.

Iran is negotiating with six world powers to end a dispute over its nuclear program with an agreement that would remove the curbs on its oil and financial industries.

“In the long term, Iran wants to move more into selling refined products and having joint-venture refineries abroad,” said Olivier Jakob, managing director of Zug, Switzerland based Petromatrix. “It’s strategic for them.” Diversifying exports beyond crude and into higher-value refined products will help Iran boost revenue, and owning geographically dispersed assets would help shield it from potential sanctions in the future, he said.

The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries is to meet June 5 to assess its production amid a global supply glut. OPEC should trim “at least 5%” from its output target of 30 million bpd, Iran’s Oil Minister Bijan Namdar Zanganeh said at a news conference in Tehran in April.

The country plans eventually to reduce exports of condensate to zero and use all of it in local refineries, Sadegh-Abadi said. As condensate production rises to more than 1 million bpd in the next few years, Iran will produce more naphtha for export to chemical-makers in Asia, he said.

“Around 60% of Siraf’s gas condensate will be turned into naphtha, which is the basis for the production of plastic-based products,” Sadegh-Abadi said. Consumption of those products “is growing and directly linked to improvement in economic conditions in most countries,” he said.

Siraf will have capacity to produce about 270,000 bpd of naphtha, 140,000 bbl of gasoil, 30,000 bbl of liquefied petroleum gas and 40,000 bbl of kerosene, Sadegh-Abadi said.