Page 15 - DMEA Week 44 2020

DMEA REFINING DMEA

Sonangol, Gemcorp take FID on

Angolan oil refinery

ANGOLA ANGOLAN state oil firm Sonangol and Lon- up by the end of 2021, but the launch has been
don-based investment firm Gemcorp have taken pushed back to between the first and second
The project is the only a final investment decision (FID) on a 60,000 quarters of 2022. The second phase should then
one of Angola’s three barrel per day (bpd) oil refinery in Cabinda. wrap up by the second quarter of 2023, followed
planned refineries to The project is one of three planned refineries by the third by mid-2024.
reach an FID. that the southern African state wants to develop Angola currently only has one working refin-
to reduce its expanding fuel import bill, but is the ery, a 65,000 bpd facility in Luanda, which can
only one to have reached an FID. only cover around 20% of national fuel demand.
“The refinery will be the first private invest- The country’s fuel imports amounted to nearly
ment of this nature in Angola and will utilise the 3mn tonnes last year.
latest US technology,” Sonangol and Gemcorp The government held a tender to build
said in a joint statement. another 100,000 bpd refinery in Soyo earlier
Investments over the refinery’s three phases this year, but put the process on hold because of
will total $920mn, according to Sonangol. Its the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. It has
first $220mn stage will establish a 30,000 bpd an even more ambitious plan for a 200,000 bpd
plant, featuring a crude distillation unit with a plant in Lobito, but questions about feasibility
desalter, a kerosene treatment unit and ancillary have dogged that project for years.
infrastructure including a conventional buoy Angola has also enlisted a subsidiary of Italy’s
mooring system, pipelines and 1.2mn barrels of Maire Tecnimont as an engineering, procure-
storage capacity. The other two stages will add ment and construction (EPC) contractor to
a catalytic reformer, a hydrotreater and a cata- revamp the Luanda refinery. The work involves
lytic cracking unit, raising throughput capacity adding a naphtha hydrotreater and a catalytic
to 60,000 bpd. reformer, in order to quadruple the plant’s gas-
The project’s first phase had been due to start oline output to 400,000 tonnes per year (tpy). ™

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