Page 11 - DMEA Week 05 2022

DMEA TERMINALS & SHIPPING DMEA

Sonangol hopes new terminal will

improve domestic fuel supplies

AFRICA ANGOLA’S national oil company (NOC) a total cost of $6bn.
Sonangol is hoping that the launch of a new This date is based on early physical works
import terminal in Porto do Lobito will help beginning in Q2 2022, but a decision is still
improve supply conditions on the domestic fuel awaited following a tender launched in July for
market. investment in the planned facility, with Sonan-
The Porto Lobito terminal, which will serve gol envisaging private investors taking a stake of
fuel markets in the southern, eastern and central 70%.
parts of the country, is still under construction. A 1.5-square km site has been allocated just
Sonangol aims to complete the facility before the north of Lobito.
end of this year. As previously conceived, the refinery would
At present, the NOC has only one terminal be built in two phases – the first comprising
that handles imported petroleum products. This low-conversion units aimed at satisfying local
facility, located near Luanda, is overloaded and demand, and the second upgrading the plant’s
unable to optimise distribution operations in complexity to produce higher-quality fuels suit-
such a way as to prevent the smuggling of fuel, able for export.
according to Joaquim Fernandes, a representa- According to Minister of Mineral Resources,
tive of Sonangol. Oil and Gas Diamantino Azevedo: “Our per-
To address this problem, Fernandes said, spective is to have, first, enough capacity to
the NOC has divided the country up into three supply the internal market, but also additional
delivery regions – north, east and south. capacity so that we can export essentially to the
Sonangol intends to look for ways to serve countries in the region.”
these three regions more effectively by boat He added: “There is an outflow of oil deriv-
and may also work to launch rail shipments of atives from Angola to the Democratic Republic
fuel, he was quoted as saying in the most recent of Congo, so it is an interesting market. We have
monthly edition of the NOC’s internal publica- been working with our counterparts in the DRC
tion, Jornal Pacaça. to make the relationship more fruitful for our
Lobito is also the location of a planned countries. Already in relation to Zambia, there is
200,000-barrel-per-day (bpd) refinery which a proposal by the Zambian government to study
Sonangol expects to complete in 2025 or 2026 at the feasibility of a pipeline from Lobito.”™

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