Page 10 - AfrOil Week 10 2021

AfrOil INVESTMENT AfrOil

Angola to name winner of Soyo

refinery contract on March 15

ANGOLA ANGOLA’S Ministry of Mineral Resources and consortium formed by China National Machin-
Petroleum (MIREMPET) is slated to name the ery & Equipment Import & Export Corporation
winner of a tender for the construction of a new (CMEC) and two relatively unknown compa-
refinery in Soyo early next week, on March 15. nies, AIDA and VSF.
MIREMPET wrapped up the bidding pro- Since then, one of the bidders has dropped
cess for the contract, which envisions the build- out of the contest. MIREMPET has not yet iden-
ing a 100,000 barrel per day (bpd) oil-processing tified the entity in question, but it has indicated
plant in Angola’s Zaire Province, in late Decem- that all of the other eight have completed the due
ber. It had originally planned to select the win- diligence process carried out by its contractor,
ner of the tender before the end of 2020 but the PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC).
deadline was pushed back twice, first to March The ministry began accepting bids for the
1 and then to March 15. project early last year and had hoped to declare
The ministry justified the first postponement the winning contractor in April.
by saying that the potential investors needed to However, it was forced to change the time-
review their guarantees for investment financ- line for the tender because of the coronavirus
ing. It said in a statement at the time that the (COVID-19) pandemic, which slowed the pro-
bidders would have to work “through renowned cess of making the necessary evaluations and
financial institutions, as well as [re-affirm] the adjudications. ™
corporate structures involved” for this part of
the process.
Then last week, it explained that it had put
off the announcement yet again at the request
of some of the bidders. After the presentation of
the ministry’s preliminary report, it said, “some
competitors asked the evaluation committee for
additional information, demanding time for due
[diligence].” Additionally, it stated that Angola’s
private investment law had made it “necessary
to hold additional clarification meetings with
competitors.”
As of late December, MIREMPET had
received nine final bids for the refinery contract
and had named the bidders: Atis Nebest-Angola,
a local firm; China Petroleum Pipeline (CPP);
Gemcorp Capital (UK); Jiangsu Sinochem Con-
struction Co. (China); Quanten Consortium
(US); SDRC (China); Satarem (Switzerland);
Tobaka Investment Group (South Africa), and a Plan for Soyo refinery (Image: File)

PERFORMANCE
Libyan oil output seen topping 2mn bpd

LIBYA MUSTAFA Sanalla, the head of Libya’s National and will reach 1.6mn bpd within two years, he
Oil Corp. (NOC), says his country is capable asserted. Within four years, he said, yields may
of pushing crude production levels above 2mn climb to 2.1mn bpd.
barrels per day (bpd) within the next four years. In the short term, he reported, NOC and its
Libya is currently producing around 1.3mn upstream subsidiaries will continue working
bpd, Sanalla said in an interview with Bloomb- to restart all the oilfields that were shut down
erg earlier this week. Output levels are on track in 2015 after being attacked by terrorist groups
to rise to 1.45mn bpd by the end of this year affiliated with the Islamic State (Daesh), he said.

P10 www. NEWSBASE .com Week 10 10•March•2021