Page 5 - AfrOil Week 25 2022

AfrOil COMMENTARY AfrOil

Earlier this year, Minister for Public Enterprises Cabinda (60,000 bpd), Soyo (100,000 bpd) and
Joshua Cudjoe said the government was seeking Lobito (200,000 bpd).
strategic partners willing to provide the capital Meanwhile, in Nigeria, the national oil com-
required to rehabilitate TOR, which still requires pany (NOC), now known as Nigerian National
extensive repair work. Petroleum Co. Ltd (NNPC Ltd), is expecting to
bring 50,000 bpd of capacity back on stream at
Rallying call its Port Harcourt refinery next year, as part of
Similar calls have been levelled at the govern- a wider, multi-billion-dollar plan to breathe life
ment of Morocco to revive the 200,000 bpd into four underutilised and poorly maintained
Societe Anonyme Marocaine de l’Industrie refineries with a combined capacity of 445,000
du Raffinage (SAMIR) unit at Mohammedia, bpd. New refineries
which has been idle since 2015. By far the largest and most significant of the
Calls for the facility’s reactivation have been additions will come from the 650,000 bpd Dan- suited to process
relatively common over the past few years but gote refinery and petrochemicals complex at
have intensified amid accusations that the refin- Lekki near Lagos. This facility is being built by various crude
ery’s closure is a key factor in the high pump the privately owned Dangote Group but is par- grades are a
prices faced by Moroccans. tially owned by the government.
SAMIR’s doors closed as debts had left it una- Details about the plant, which is now seen significant shot
ble to finance fresh purchases of crude feedstock, coming into operations in early 2023 at a
and Saudi-Ethiopian majority owner Mohamed reduced capacity of 540,000 bpd when it is in the arm for
al-Amoudi reneged on a promised capital injec- fully commissioned, emerged when an internal
tion. Al-Amoudi’s Sweden-based Corrall Petro- document was leaked to local media last week. intra-continental
leum Holdings held a 67% stake in the company. The document said that the refinery has been fuel trade
In late September 2016, Corrall’s legal ave- designed to handle grades of African crude,
nues were exhausted, as the Court of Cassation several Middle Eastern grades and US light oil
confirmed the verdict, ruling that the wind-up (LTO).
should proceed. Creditors owed part of SAMIR’s It added that the feedstock would be pro-
estimated MAD44bn ($4.6bn) debt queued up cessed to produce gasoline (33,571 tonnes per
to have their claims validated by the courts in day), diesel (15,197 tpd), jet fuel (14,849 tpd),
order to secure a slice of the proceeds from the LPG (717 tpd), polypropylene (1,980 tpd) and
sell-off. other value-added fuels (5,154 tpd).
Various bids by investors have failed, and All of these products are in high demand
while the energy ministry has said that reacti- throughout the continent, and while the Dan-
vating the refinery will not be possible until legal gote plant is expected primarily to benefit the
proceedings are concluded, there are fears that Nigerian market, new refineries suited to pro-
the cost of resuming operations could be almost cess various crude grades are a significant shot in
as high as constructing a new refinery. the arm for intra-continental trade. As pipeline
The outlook appears almost as gloomy in infrastructure continues to be developed, this
South Africa, where two of the country’s six may provide new opportunities to struggling or
refineries (Engen and Sapref) have already shut closed facilities. ™
down – likely permanently – a decision on the
fate of another (Natref) is due to be taken this
year, a fourth (Astron) is recovering from a fire
and another (Mossel Bay GTL) is struggling for
feedstock.
This leaves Sasol’s 160,000 bpd Secunda coal-
to-liquids (CTL) plant as the only fully func-
tional unit. This facility is even undergoing an
improvement programme.
However, South Africa’s conventional refin-
eries have been plagued by years of uncertainty
and this their operating environment will
become even more challenging in September
2023, once the Clean Fuels 2 (CF2) legislation
comes into effect, mandating the use of ultra-
low-sulphur gasoline and diesel products with
which existing units cannot comply.

Encouragement
The situation is somewhat rosier in Angola and
Nigeria, where a combined 1.49mn bpd or more
of new, upgraded or revamped capacity is set to
come into operation in the next few years.
The former country is nearing completion
of an upgrade and 25,000 bpd expansion of
the Luanda refinery as it closes in on the long- Italy’s ATB Riva Calzoni delivered two hydrocracking
awaited addition of more facilities with plants at processors to the Dangote plant in 2018 (Photo: ATB)

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