The government of Angola, through state-owned Sonangol EP, and new partner Gemcorp Capital LLP, a London-based investment management firm, have taken final investment decision (FID) to proceed with the country’s long-planned project for construction of a greenfield refinery on the Malembo plain, 30 km north of Cabinda, in the country’s province of Cabinda (OGJ Online, June 4, 2019).
As part of the FID reached in late October, Gemcorp (90%) and Sonangol (10%) will invest $220 million to build Phase 1 of the proposed refinery, which alongside a 30,000-b/d crude distillation unit, desalinator, kerosine treating unit, and auxiliary infrastructure, also will include construction of a conventional float anchoring system, pipelines, and a more than 1.2-million bbl storage terminal, Sonangol said.
The FID also covers a $700-million investment for construction of Phases 2 and 3, which will add another 30,000 b/d of crude processing capacity, as well as units for catalytic reforming, hydrotreating, and catalytic cracking that will transform the site into a full-conversion refinery, according to the operator.
With formal construction of the site—including land clearing and preparation—started in March 2020 and completed in August 2020 and long-lead items for the project ordered in November 2020, Phase 1 of the 60,000-b/d refinery is scheduled to enter operation in first-quarter 2022, Sonangol and Gemcorp said.
Phases 2 and 3 of the refinery are scheduled to be completed in second-quarter 2023 and second-quarter 2024, respectively, according to Sonangol’s 2019 annual report released in late-September 2020.
As the first private investment of its kind in Angola, the FID for the refinery aligns with the Angolan government’s main strategic objectives of increasing domestic crude processing capacity to help considerably reduce the country’s dependence on expensive imports of refined products, encouraging increased foreign investment, and creating employment opportunities for Angolans, said Sebastião Gaspar Martins, Sonangol’s chairman.
The revised partnership for the Cabinda refinery follows Sonangol’s June 2019 agreement with the United Shine consortium for the project, which Sonangol terminated later in the year following a contractual breach by the consortium, Sonangol said in its 2019 annual report.
Once fully operable, the Cabinda refinery will produce gasoline, diesel, LPG, fuel oil, Jet A1, and kerosine, according to Sonangol and Gemcorp.