Page 12 - DMEA Week 33 2021

DMEA FUELS DMEA
Rwandan fuel subsidies will remain in place through September
AFRICA
THE government of Rwanda has decided to maintain motor fuel prices at current levels until the end of September.
Rwanda Utilities and Regulatory Authority (RURA) announced the price freeze on August 14, saying that officials in Kigali had decided to subsidise gasoline and diesel prices for a period of two months ending on September 30. The government has already spent about RWF15bn on the subsidy programme, according to Ernest Nsabimana, the director-general of RURA.
Nsabimana said that the government had taken action because of economic concerns. “This decision has been taken in order to avoid the effects on the economy [that] might be caused by the hiking in price of fuel products,” he was quoted as saying in a RURA statement.
In the statement, he explained that diesel
prices might have gone up to RWF1,122 per litre for diesel and to RWF1,172 per litre for gasoline without the subsidies. These price hikes would have driven transport costs up for both people and goods, thereby spurring a rise in the cost of living, he said. Rwanda’s government was keen to avoid this, since the country’s economy has not yet recovered from the effects of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, he added.
He further indicated that Rwandan authori- ties would reconsider fuel pricing policies after the end of September. Decisions about whether to continue the subsidy programme will depend on the state of the national economy, as well as global oil prices, he stated.
In the meantime, he said, as long as the sub- sidies are in place, the government will also sus- pend collection of taxes on gasoline and diesel.™
TENDERS
KNPC names prequalified bidders for catalyst plant
MIDDLE EAST
KUWAIT announced this week that five inter- national companies have been prequalified to bid in collaboration with local firms to build and operate a plant for extracting precious minerals from used catalysts.
Local media outlet Al-Anba quoted sources as saying that downstream-focused Kuwait National Petroleum Co. (KNPC) had prequal- ified Harsco Metals United of the UK together in alliance with Abdulaziz Al-Rasheed and His Sons Co.; Plum-Monix Industry Co. Taiwan and Shell Overseas Investment Co in collabora- tion with the National Technology Projects Co.; Environment Development Co. Ltd with the Kuwaiti Geophysical Co.; and Refracast Met- allurgical Co. with the local Metallurgical and Processing Industries Co.
Following the bidding process, the winning company will be awarded a 20-year contract to sell the used catalysts which currently amount to around 25 tonnes per year (tpy).
With Kuwait closing in on the completion of a $25bn project to overhaul the country’s refining sector and more than double the refining slate
to 2mn barrels per day (bpd), KNPC anticipates that the volume of spent catalysts will rise to 50-60 tpy, which it foresees as providing signif- icant returns.
The sources said that the plant will be designed to provide products that are globally competitive.
In June, KNPC announced the completion of its Clean Fuels Project (CFP) which comprises the upgrade and expansion of Mina Abdullah and the Mina al-Ahmadi refineries to a com- bined capacity of 800,000 bpd.
Meanwhile, the new 615,000-bpd Al-Zour refinery is due for commissioning later this year. The refinery’s first mini refining unit will begin operations in November, as it gradually ramps up ahead of being fully operational at the end of Q1 2022.
Meanwhile, a 2.8mn-tpy petrochemical facil- ity is expected to follow with a provisional date set for 2024 on units that will be capable of pro- ducing 1.4mn tpy of paraxylene (PX), 940,000 tpy of polypropylene (PP) and 420,000 tpy of gasoline.™
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w w w . N E W S B A S E . c o m Week 33 19•August•2021