Senegal plans to begin construction on a new refinery in next year
The CEO of the national refining firm SAR announced on Thursday that Senegal will begin construction of a new oil refinery in the coming year, to increase domestic processing capacity. He is looking for investments between $2 billion and $5 billion.
Mamadou Abib Diop, speaking at the African Energy Conference in Cape Town, said that China, Turkey, and South Korea have all made financing offers to the country.
Abib Diop stated that the feedstock for this new plant will primarily come from Senegal’s offshore Sangomar gas and oil field. The field is operated by Woodside Energy, with Petrosen as a minority investor. The field began producing last year, with an annual production of 34,5 million barrels or about 4.6 million tonnes.
SAR is West Africa's first refinery. It processes around 30,000 barrels of crude oil per day or 1.5 million tons a year. However, it faces a shortage at home.
Abib Diop stated that "this gap will be filled with a SAR 2.0 project, which will mean adding a second refinery to increase the processing capacity by 4 million tons per year."
SAR aims to be self-sufficient in petroleum products by 2029, and export them to other countries in the region.
Abib Diop said that there is still no decision on the location of the refinery or whether government will take equity in its development.
He added, "A lot investors are coming to show their interest in financing these projects." (Reporting and editing by Jan Harvey; Wendell Roelf)
(source: Reuters)
