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Thursday, May 24, 2018
Sonatrach’s chief, Abdelmoumen Ould Kaddour, told reporters that the firm has no plans to buy another foreign refinery after purchasing the Augusta refinery in Italy from ExxonMobil.
“For now it is not our plan to buy another one overseas,” Kaddour told reporters, adding that the capacity of Augusta along with Sonatrach’s Algiers and planned Hassi Messaoud refineries would enable Algeria to cover its needs.
Earlier this month Sonatrach and ExxonMobil entereted into a deal that had Sonatrach purchasing the US supermajor’s 175,000 bpd Augusta refinery in Sicily.
Algeria currently spends a significant amount on importing fuel products due to its limited refining capacity. “We import a lot of naphtha and fuel products,” said Mazighi Ahmed, a Sonatrach executive in a Reuters report. “It’s an astronomic bill.”
In addition to commenting on the Augusta refinery buy, Kaddour also said that he hoped ExxonMobil would become a partner in Algeria’s energy industry, without elaborating. ExxonMobil is one of the few major E&P firms that is absent from Algeria’s oil and gas sector.
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