Page 9 - AfrOil Week 49 2019

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Sonangol cancels United Shine’s contract for Cabinda refinery
ANGOLA
a memorandum of understanding (MoU) on the execution and financing of the project on October 30, it said.
Fuel trading licences
In related news, Angola’s state press agency ANGOP reported last week that the Luanda provincial administration was preparing to start issuing licences to individual investors for small-scale trading in petroleum products.
Provincial authorities discussed the subject on December 5 at a training seminar for munic- ipal officials on the transfer of skills related to the oil sector, the news agency said. They also presented models for the licences, it stated.
At the seminar, representatives of the pro- vincial administration explained that Luanda was due to join the other 17 Angolan prov- inces that have been issuing such licences since 2013 as of December 16. The licences permit individual investors to build and operate fill- ing stations that can dispense gasoline, diesel, kerosene, butane and lubricants into containers with a capacity of up to 200 cubic metres, they explained ™
ANGOLA’S national oil company (NOC) Sonangol revealed last week that it had cancelled a contract with the United Shine consortium for the construction of a refinery in Cabinda Province.
In a statement, the company said it had ter- minated the deal in late October after deter- mining that the consortium had failed to meet its obligations. More specifically, it said that United Shine had not managed to provide con- crete proof of its ability to finance and execute the project.
Additionally, it stated that United Shine had not submitted the documentation needed to demonstrate its ability to complete the project within 24 months, as stipulated in the contract. The group had not produced commercial, financial or technical studies or completed the documents needed to secure approval of its plans, it explained. Nor did it acquire the titles or documents needed to prove its ownership of the facility, it said.
Sonangol named United Shine as the winner of a tender for the refinery contract in Novem- ber 2018. The parties then signed a preliminary agreement in February 2019 and finalised a contract the following June.
That document called for the consortium to construct a 60,000 barrel per day (bpd) oil-pro- cessing plant capable of turning out gasoline, diesel, jet fuel and residual fuel oil in Cabinda Province. It also stated that equity in the refin- ery would be split 90% to United Shine and 10% to Sonaref, a subsidiary of Sonangol.
Luanda has yet to reveal full details of its contract with United Shine. (Indeed, it has not named the members of the consortium publicly or stated the value of the project.) Sonangol did say last week, though, that the cancellation of the deal with the group had allowed it to begin negotiations with another potential partner, Gemcorp Capital, an investment manage- ment firm based in the UK. The parties signed
PERFORMANCE
Angola sees oil output rising 3.3% in 2020
United Shine and Sonangol signed a contract for the Cabinda refinery project in June 2019 (Photo: Industrial Valve News)
ANGOLA
ANGOLA’S Minister of Mineral Resources and Petroleum Diamantino Azevedo said on December 5 that his country was on track to see oil production rise next year.
Speaking to the national press agency ANGOP ahead of the most recent OPEC summit meeting in Vienna, Azevedo said that
output was set to rise to 1.436mn barrels per day in 2020.
This would represent a 3.3% increase on the projected 2019 figure of 1.39mn bpd.
Pushing production up to that level will allow Angola to remain in compliance with OPEC’s production regime, he added.
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