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Energy

Diamantino Azevedo asks for “less lamentations” and criticizes first meeting of African oil companies

Diamantino Azevedo, Minister of Mineral Resources, Oil and Gas and President of the African Organization of Petroleum Producing Countries (APPO), considered this Tuesday “a shame” that only once African oil companies have met, calling for “more work and less speeches and lamentations”.

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According to Diamantino Azevedo, oil companies from Africa only met for the first time on Monday, in Luanda, considering the late initiative as "a shame".

"This cannot continue to happen, so, gentlemen, let's stop talking, stop complaining, talk less, do more, share more and believe more in ourselves", urged the president of APPO this Tuesday.

"We Africans are smart, but we have to be bold too, we have to stop being egotistical, we have to trust and believe in ourselves," he added.

For the also minister of Mineral Resources, Oil and Gas, "there are capacities in Angola, and they must exist in other countries", but he reiterated: "Now we have to believe in ourselves, if the technology comes from abroad it is good and it is accepted, if it is from Africa is no longer good and not accepted, and then we're not going to blame anyone, we're going to blame ourselves".

The APPO leader was speaking at a roundtable debate session on African local content, on the second day of the 8th edition of the African Petroleum Congress and Exhibition (CAPE) which began on Monday, in Luanda.

Diamantino Azevedo underlined that there are capacities in Africa for the implementation of local content.

"We are going to reflect on this and, above all, we are going to walk around our countries, we are going to visit what each country has, to make agreements, to work together, it is necessary to act in this way", he defended.

Review of policies and progress in the implementation of local content in Africa was the sub-theme of this thematic panel that brought together different operators in the sector, including investors, officials from regulatory bodies and sector associations and an audience made up of representatives from the 15 APPO member countries and guests.

After the speakers' intervention, the minister recalled the "underused" capabilities of the state oil company Sonangol to justify the sector's skills in Africa "often underused".

"I have always publicly said that if we close Sonangol today there will be no negative effect on oil activity in Angola, because Sonangol has become a big company in many things, but not in the oil industry," he said.

The company "operates only about 2 percent of oil production in Angola, however, it has created a lot of capacity, both in terms of human resources and technical infrastructure" that "we do not use, or use little", he stressed.

"That's why we decided that Sonangol would stop being a regulator and concessionaire, we decided to privatize almost everything outside the oil business to focus on the oil activity and its entire chain, that was the orientation we gave to Sonangol and we are walking through there," he argued.

The Instituto Superior Tecnológico, assigned to Sonangol, the laboratory with modern equipment from Sonils, the logistics base of Sonangol, the gas transport vessels and two latest generation drillships were examples presented by Diamantino Azevedo as the country's capabilities that "are underused or misused".

The APPO president also noted that the country decided to create a Sonangol Research and Development Center, "completely well structured" and that it was decided to "extend the purpose of this center to renewable energies as well".

"For hydrogen, minerals, electric cars, I have also been encouraging Sonangol to look at what we have in Angola, namely lithium, cobalt, zinc, and our companies have to become energy companies", he concluded.

The work of CAPE VIII ends on Thursday, in the capital.

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