The Chinese company CMEC, already building the Lobito Refinery, and Gemcorp, a partner of Sonangol in Cabinda, are waiting in the wings. Whoever takes over will enjoy the same mega tax and customs benefits granted to the Cabinda refinery. The expected termination of the contract with the Quanten consortium, winner of the 2021 international public tender to build the Soyo Refinery, now seems to be only a matter of time — even the Minister of Petroleum, Diamantino de Azevedo, has suggested it is inevitable.
Four years on, the joint venture made up of U.S. companies Quanten LLC, TGT Inc., Aurum & Sharp LLC, and Angola’s ATIS Nebest has still not secured the necessary financing for the project, prompting the Government to lose patience and prepare an alternative solution for the refinery, which was originally scheduled to come online this year. On the Angolan side, the joint venture includes businessmen Dionísio Viegas and José Puna Zau, former Deputy Minister of Public Works.
After the groundbreaking ceremony in May 2022, the project — designed to process up to 100,000 barrels of oil per day — has seen no further progress. In fact, Quanten Consortium LLC was already given an ultimatum in June 2024. The Minister of Mineral Resources, Petroleum and Gas, speaking in Parliament, said: “The company faces major difficulties in securing financing for the project. If it fails, we will have to terminate the contract and seek another alternative.”
At the inauguration ceremony of the Cabinda Refinery, the minister stated that the Soyo project contract is being “re-evaluated due to the constraints presented by the private promoter,” namely Quanten.
The key obstacle to the Americans remaining in the Soyo Refinery project is their inability to mobilize the USD 3.5 billion required for the project. This comes amid a global context of increasingly limited financing for fossil fuel projects, as the world accelerates the energy transition toward cleaner, renewable sources.
If the termination goes ahead, the most likely candidates to take over are China’s CMEC (promoters of the Lobito Refinery) or Gemcorp, which just inaugurated the first production phase of the Cabinda Refinery. They ranked second and third, respectively, in the public tender that initially awarded the project to Quanten. At least that is what the law prescribes, although it has not always been followed — as with the Cabinda Refinery, which was directly awarded without a tender.
The Government has a bargaining chip to attract private investors for Soyo and other potential refineries: granting them the same tax and customs benefits offered to the Cabinda Refinery, as President João Lourenço confirmed this week during the inauguration ceremony, in response to a question from Expansão.
The contract with the U.S.-Angolan joint venture was signed under a public-private partnership (PPP) using the BOO model (Build-Own-Operate). Under this model, the winning company designs, builds, operates, and retains ownership of the infrastructure indefinitely or for a very long period, unlike BOT (Build-Operate-Transfer), where ownership is transferred to the client (the State) at the end of the contract.
The Soyo Refinery was first announced in 2015, during the government of José Eduardo dos Santos. At that time, it was a partnership between CIF and Sonangol, later suspended after the arrest in Asia of Xu Jinghua “Sam Pa,” the main shareholder of China International Fund (CIF).
Source: Expansão
