Page 10 - AfrOil Week 08 2021

AfrOil INVESTMENT AfrOil

Angolan president authorised to offer

incentives for Cabinda refinery project

ANGOLA ANGOLAN legislators have voiced strong sup- and Zaire provinces, as well as the upgrade of an
port for the government’s plans to reduce the existing facility in Luanda.
country’s dependence on imported petroleum The total cost of constructing the Cabinda
products. According to the state news agency, plant, which will have a design capacity of
members of the National Assembly voted unani- 60,000 barrels per day (bpd), is expected to
mously last week to approve legislation designed reach $920mn. Angola’s national oil company
to build up the domestic refining industry. (NOC) and its contractor Gemcorp (UK) made
The bill in question authorises Angolan a final investment decision (FID) on the project
authorities to offer special incentives for the last October, saying that they intend to build the
construction of the Cabinda refinery. More facility in stages. The first stage will involve the
specifically, it permits President João Lourenço construction of a crude distillation unit with a
to grant administrative and fiscal concessions capacity of 30,000 bpd, as well as storage tanks
to companies involved in the building of this that can hold up to 1.2mn barrels of oil, while the
oil-processing plant. second and third stages will involve doubling the
Angola’s state press agency did not say plant’s capacity and adding secondary process-
whether the president was considering any ing facilities.
specific concessions with respect to the refin- According to Azevedo, the Cabinda refin-
ery project. It did quote Petroleum and Mineral ery and the other facilities covered by the pro-
Resources Minister Diamantino Azevedo as gramme will allow Angola to use more of its
saying, though, that the Cabinda facility was own crude oil to meet domestic fuel demand.
being built within the framework of a wider Currently, he noted, the country only produces
programme that also provided for building enough refined fuels to cover 20% of current
additional oil-processing plants in Benguela consumption levels. ™

PERFORMANCE
Algeria’s compliance with OPEC production

quotas cuts down on Sonatrach’s output

ALGERIA ALGERIA’S national oil company (NOC) Algeria also resumed gasoline and diesel
Sonatrach saw its annual oil and natural gas exports in 2020, after a hiatus of nearly a dec-
output decline to 176mn tonnes of oil equiva- ade. Sonatrach produced 9.5mn tonnes of diesel
lent (toe) in 2020, as the company complied with and 3.4mn tonnes of gasoline last year, while its
OPEC oil production reduction commitments, refineries processed 27.2mn tonnes of oil and
Algerie Presse Service reported Sonatrach CEO condensate. ™
Tewfik Hakkar as saying.
The companies supplied Algeria’s domestic
market with 60mn toe in 2020, roughly the same
amount as it did in 2019. It also exported 81mn
toe last year, generating $20.2bn in revenues.
With export revenues declining due to the
plunge in global oil prices, Sonatrach cut back
on investments to $5.6bn in 2020, down from
$9bn in the previous year, with over 90% des-
tined towards exploration and production.
Despite lower investments, the company made
18 new oil discoveries in 2020, more than twice
the number of finds made in the year before. Sonatrach reported oil and gas output down in 2020 (File Photo)

P10 www. NEWSBASE .com Week 08 24•February•2021