Angola sets up new refinery

LUANDA – Construction of Angola’s new flagship oil refinery could start next year with state oil firm Sonangol upbeat about finding investors to fund the US$3,75 billion project, state-run Jornal de Angola said on Wednesday.

Work on the Sonaref refinery, with a capacity to process 200 000 barrels per day, had stalled with Sonangol struggling to find financial backing. But a strategy to link a stake in the refinery to a new licensing round in deepwater acreage had paid dividends and the plant, to be built in the port city of Lobito, should be up and running by 2010, the newspaper reported.”We have had some difficulty in obtaining investors, but since we introduced a connection between the Sonaref project and the concessions (of oil exploration) in Blocks 15, 17 and 18 as a condition, we have registered an increase in interest,” Syanga Abilio, Sonangol’s administrator and vice president, told the newspaper.”We expect the refinery to be operational from 2009 or 2010,” he added.A spokeswoman for the firm confirmed that there had been a turnaround in investor interest and that the refinery project had attracted more potential backers than was necessary, but no further details were immediately available.The refinery, to be built by South Korea’s Samsung, would produce enough oil to satisfy the local market.An existing refinery just north of the capital Luanda has a capacity of just 40 000 barrels per day and is insufficient to meet the country’s growing demand for fuel, the newspaper said.Sonangol has said the refinery development is a major priority for the government and that it will maximise the value to Sonangol of Angola’s crude.It also says this will represent a new stage in the growth of Angola’s oil industry.Angola is sub-Saharan Africa’s second largest crude producer after Nigeria.It churns out around 1,3 million barrels of oil per day and this is expected to rise to two million barrels per day as a number of new developments come onstream.-Nampa-ReutersBut a strategy to link a stake in the refinery to a new licensing round in deepwater acreage had paid dividends and the plant, to be built in the port city of Lobito, should be up and running by 2010, the newspaper reported.”We have had some difficulty in obtaining investors, but since we introduced a connection between the Sonaref project and the concessions (of oil exploration) in Blocks 15, 17 and 18 as a condition, we have registered an increase in interest,” Syanga Abilio, Sonangol’s administrator and vice president, told the newspaper.”We expect the refinery to be operational from 2009 or 2010,” he added.A spokeswoman for the firm confirmed that there had been a turnaround in investor interest and that the refinery project had attracted more potential backers than was necessary, but no further details were immediately available.The refinery, to be built by South Korea’s Samsung, would produce enough oil to satisfy the local market.An existing refinery just north of the capital Luanda has a capacity of just 40 000 barrels per day and is insufficient to meet the country’s growing demand for fuel, the newspaper said.Sonangol has said the refinery development is a major priority for the government and that it will maximise the value to Sonangol of Angola’s crude.It also says this will represent a new stage in the growth of Angola’s oil industry.Angola is sub-Saharan Africa’s second largest crude producer after Nigeria.It churns out around 1,3 million barrels of oil per day and this is expected to rise to two million barrels per day as a number of new developments come onstream.-Nampa-Reuters