Africa-Press – Angola. Lobito bay, located in Benguela province, will be protected from the risk of oil pollution resulting from the production of the future refinery in that city.
The guarantee was given by the coordinator of the construction project of the aforementioned refinery, Guiomar Ferreira, when asked recently about the process of loading and unloading petroleum products and their derivatives.
Oil refineries are one of the human activities with the greatest polluting potential. They consume large amounts of water and energy, produce large amounts of liquid waste, release various harmful gases into the atmosphere and produce solid waste that is difficult to treat and dispose of.
However, according to Guiomar Ferreira, the National Fuel Society, SONANGOL, worked with the Ministry of Culture, Tourism and the Environment to safeguard this assumption, having therefore obtained the licenses to proceed with the project.
“Today, modern refineries take a series of measures in order to avoid polluting as much as possible”, explained the coordinator.
Lobito Bay is five kilometers long and two kilometers at its widest. The width of the access channel is 300 meters, while the depth is 17 meters.
Referring to the basic engineering works at the refinery, also known as Sonaref, the coordinator highlighted the abstraction of water from the Biópio dam, in the municipality of Catumbela, as one of the main actions to be carried out.
This action had started between 2015 and 2016, but was interrupted, due to the stoppage of the project. “Right now, we are making some changes to the basic engineering to be able to restart other pending works, such as administrative and support buildings, among others”, he stressed.
After this stage, So-nangol will be able to enter the market to research the future contractor, who will be responsible for buying the installation material and setting up the factory.
In July 2021, Sonangol had launched an international public tender for the construction of the refinery, but the winner was not found because the bidders did not complete the requirements demanded by the Angolan oil company.
The Lobito refinery was designed to process 200,000 barrels of oil per day. It is located 35 kilometers northwest of the city of Benguela and five kilometers northwest of the railway-port city of Lobito.
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