TEHRAN, July 18 (UPI) -- Iran recently signed contracts with Turkish and South Korean companies to develop Iran's petrochemical industry, an Iranian official said.

A report by the semi-official Fars news agency earlier this month refrained from naming the two companies that signed agreements despite sanctions against Iran aimed at halting development of Iran's nuclear program.


Abdolhossein Bayat, head of Iran's National Petrochemical Co. and deputy oil minister, told the news agency last week, the Turkish and South Korean companies agreed to invest in the development of downstream activities.

"Fortunately foreign investors have expressed their willingness to take part in Iran's projects so they can reinforce their cooperation with Iranian private sector companies," Bayat said.

Bayat said two memorandums of understanding were signed. One between a Turkish company and its Iranian partner to build a PVC compound unit with production capacity of 350,000 tons per year. A South Korean company signed an agreement to produce more than 30,000 tons per year of polymeric compounds.