Page 15 - AfrOil Week 44

AfrOil INVESTMENT AfrOil

Angola currently only has one working refinery, plant in Lobito, but questions about feasibility
a 65,000 bpd facility in Luanda, which can only have dogged that project for years.
cover around 20% of national fuel demand. The Angola has also enlisted a subsidiary of Ita-
country’s fuel imports amounted to nearly 3mn ly’s Maire Tecnimont as an engineering, pro-
tonnes last year. curement and construction (EPC) contractor
The government held a tender to build to revamp the Luanda refinery.
another 100,000 bpd refinery in Soyo earlier The work involves adding a naphtha hydro-
this year, but put the process on hold because of treater and a catalytic reformer, in order to
the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. It has quadruple the plant’s gasoline output to 400,000
an even more ambitious plan for a 200,000 bpd tonnes per year (tpy). ™

PERFORMANCE
Libyan oil output reportedly

back up to 850,000 bpd

LIBYA LIBYAN crude oil output has continued to rise
over the last week and is now rapidly approach-
ing the level of 900,000 barrels per day (bpd)
prevailing before the imposition of a blockade
in mid-January.
A source inside the Libyan oil industry told
Reuters on November 3 that production now
stood at approximately 850,000 bpd. He was
speaking just a few days after Mustafa Sanalla,
the head of National Oil Corp. (NOC), put out-
put at 800,000 bpd.
In an interview with Bloomberg, Sanalla said
NOC and its upstream production units were
on track to bring average production levels up
to 1mn bpd in December, rising to 1.3mn bpd
by January of next year. Libya could then push
yields all the way up to 1.6mn bpd by the end of
2021, provided that the Finance Ministry allo-
cates sufficient resources to NOC, he added.
He went on to say that Libya was ready to
work with OPEC and its allies in order to ensure NOC has lifted force majeure on all oilfields (Image: EIA)
the stability of world crude markets as it brought
idled fields and infrastructure back online. and work-over needs to be sufficiently con-
“We’re very interested in co-ordinating with our ducted across all the fields and oil transport
colleagues in OPEC,” he told Bloomberg. “We’re pipelines,” wrote Nishant Bhushan, an oil mar-
interested in achieving a balance in terms of sup- ket analyst for the Norwegian consultancy. He
ply and demand.” pointed specifically to conditions at Sharara, the
The NOC chief was speaking in the wake of country’s largest oilfield, saying that production
reports that the rise in Libya’s output had helped rates were probably climbing more slowly than
bring crude prices down. Brent and West Texas reported, given that the field’s operator had not
Intermediate (WTI), the two main benchmark been able to perform maintenance tasks during
grades for oil markets in Europe and the US the shutdown.
respectively, both saw prices slip by about $3.00 Libyan crude output began climbing after the
per barrel between October 26 and October 30. two country’s main factions – the Tripoli-based,
Meanwhile, some industry analysts have UN-backed Government of National Accord
been less impressed than traders by reports of (GNA) and Khalifa Haftar’s Benghazi-based
the upswing in Libyan oil production. For exam- Libyan National Army (LNA) – suspended hos-
ple, Rystad Energy said in a note dated Novem- tilities on September 18. On that date, Haftar’s
ber 2 that the North African state was not likely LNA agreed to lift the blockade it had imposed
to reach the 1mn bpd mark before the end of on Libya’s key oil infrastructure facilities in Jan-
2020. uary for a period of one month. It then aban-
“Currently, we see Libya reaching 1mn bpd doned the blockade on October 23 after signing
only by early February 2021, as maintenance a ceasefire agreement with GNA. ™

Week 44 04•November•2020 www. NEWSBASE .com P15