Angola: ‘Incomprehensible country produces, oil doesn’t refine it’ – president

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Angola: ‘Incomprehensible country produces, oil doesn’t refine it’ – president

8:18 CAT | 07 Jul 2022

Photo: Pedro Parente/ANGOP

Angola’s president expressed satisfaction today with the increase in petrol production capacity at the Luanda refinery, considering it incomprehensible that the country had a large production of crude oil but minimal processing capacity.

Lourenço, who was speaking at the end of the inauguration ceremony of the petrol production complex at the Luanda refinery, said that the crude oil produced was almost entirely exported.

“We have defined as a great challenge to be faced, the correction of this situation, which has been happening, not only with the launch of construction of the Cabinda refinery, the launch of construction of the Soyo refinery and now the inauguration of this unit that increases the Luanda refinery’s gasoline production capacity four-fold,” said Lourenço.

He noted that Angola’s aim of becoming less dependent on imports of refined products was being met.

“We used to sell our raw materials and buy the finished product from the buyers of our raw materials. We bought diesel and petrol, so we will reduce [this] considerably over the next few years (…) especially once we have concluded and started operating the large Lobito refinery, which will make our country self-sufficient in refined oil products,” he noted.

The president also noted that the country would save “a lot of foreign currency” on petrol imports, not only with the inauguration of the Luanda refinery but also on the projects underway.

“In two, three years, I believe that the reduction in foreign currency spending on fuel imports will be quite large,” he noted.

Angola will save around US$300 million a year on importing petrol, with the quadrupling of this oil derivative at the Luanda refinery, from the production of 395,000 to 1.5 million litres of petrol per day.

Source: ANGOP