Angola - refinery

Angola has one refinery located on the outskirts of Luanda. It is a topping/reforming refinery, with a distillation capacity of 45,000 barrels per day (2.3 million mt/yr). Construction of the plant by Petrofina began in the late 1950’s, and the refinery was commissioned in 1958. The refinery was originally designed to process bituminous Kwanza crude supplied by pipeline from a small Petrofina operated onshore field south of Luanda, but this field has now been shut in. The refinery now processes other Angolan crudes, mainly Palanca. It produces surpluses of around 600,000mt/yr fuel oil, and, occasionally, naphtha. The export fuel oil is sold by annual tender, and generally ends up as cracking feedstock on the USEC.

The refinery runs at about 70% of capacity, and has recently undergone a modernisation programme that included some capacity expansion, conversion of a unit to an isomerisation unit, and a new control room. Total is on record stating that the maximum crude capacity is now 3 million mt (60,000 b/d), although in 2002 the throughput was only 1.8 million mt. The bitumen unit only operates at around 40% capacity, partly because the quality produced is poor, so some material is imported.

Trafigura, SMB Abidjan, and Sonangol have recently formed a marketing and storage JV to handle bitumen imported from Abidjan.