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World Oil Outlook - Opec

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Europe<br />

For the next few years, refining in Europe will not be about expansion, but rationalization.<br />

Europe’s refining industry suffers from the problem of overcapacity and,<br />

therefore, investment in crude distillation capacity is limited to the single on-going<br />

expansion of Galp Energia’s refinery in Porto, Portugal. Besides this, there are several<br />

upgrading projects – mainly in Southern and Eastern Europe – that are primarily<br />

geared to increase diesel production by adding hydro-cracking units, as well as hydrotreating<br />

projects, linked to meeting tight product quality specifications on sulphur<br />

content. In contrast to these minor project additions (compared to other regions),<br />

there are a number of refineries, mainly in Western Europe, that are either for sale,<br />

being converted to storage terminals or face closure. (Box 6.1).<br />

Africa<br />

Africa is the region where prospects for the refining industry are most difficult to assess.<br />

Certainly there is a need for more refining capacity, especially in highly populated<br />

countries such as Nigeria, Egypt, Kenya, Uganda and Ethiopia, all of which depend<br />

heavily on product imports. In addition, the region’s oil demand is growing and domestic<br />

crude oil is available in most of these countries, none of which is short of refining<br />

plans. If all announced projects on the continent were counted, they would yield<br />

more than 7 mb/d of additional distillation capacity. Nonetheless, there are not many<br />

projects that have a real chance for implementation within the next five-year horizon.<br />

Currently, the largest project under construction in Africa is the Lobito refinery<br />

in Angola, which was originally designed for a capacity of 200,000 b/d. The construction<br />

of a new refinery has also started in Biskra, Algeria, after the country launched<br />

an extensive programme to increase its refining capacity. As part of the programme,<br />

bottlenecking projects are underway in two Algerian refineries, in Skikda and Algiers.<br />

Nigeria is seeking partnership with Chinese investors to rehabilitate its refineries<br />

and to construct new grassroots plants. The initial plan called for three new refineries<br />

with a combined capacity of 750,000 b/d. However, as of the completion date of this<br />

WOO, no final decision has yet been made regarding either capacity or timing.<br />

Some progress has been achieved regarding the 80,000 b/d refinery to be built by<br />

the Egypt Refining Company (ERC) on the outskirts of Cairo, Egypt. In June of this<br />

year, the ERC announced it had reached an agreement with investors led by Citadel<br />

Capital and Qatar Petroleum to secure financing for the project, set to be operational<br />

in 2016. Similarly, PetroSA and Sinopec have agreed to build a world scale refinery in<br />

South Africa, the details of which will be determined by a feasibility study. However,<br />

181<br />

Chapter<br />

6

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