A dedicated African academy for education in the oil refining industry, and research that could result in the better vetting of ships that carry oil around African coasts are two of the ‘coming of age’ projects that have been embarked on by the African Refiners Assocation (ARA) which held its 5th annual conference in Cape Town this week.

The ARA, which was established five years ago to give the more than 40 refineries throughout the continent a single voice and presence in the international arena, has, through its concerted efforts created change in the entire industry on the continent since its inception.

Addressing nearly 200 delegates who attended the conference at the Westin Grand Hotel this week, Executive Secretary of the ARA Joel Dervain said that to describe the past year as having presented difficulties was a euphemism. ‘But we are now gearing up for our new incarnation, in which we will adopt statutes to create our new identity.  We are moving up a gear, and part of the transformation will be the focus on human resources training for which one of our members has taken responsibility - the establishment, by the SAMIR Refinery, of a refining academy in Morocco.’

Further changes involved the upgrading of non-refining Associate Members who would, as part of the transformation, also take a more active role in the affairs of the association. The Associate Members are importers, regulators and distributors of petroleum products.

The executive committee would also be considering the proposal commissioned and completed over the past 12 months to vet the seaworthiness and suitability of the tankers that transport Africa’s oil products. The objective is to progressively bring the vessels up to an acceptable standard in line with those carrying oil product throughout the world. The project will initially focus on the Gulf of Guinea region and subsequently will be rolled out to other regions.

The conference was marked by high-level analysis of, and forecast about the future of the industry.  International industry authority Steve Terry who addressed the conference on the second day, warned that there was a global overcapacity in refining right now which might well continue for the next five years or even longer. ‘The market has fundamentally changed, from operating at high refining margins for the last few years, refineries have realised that everything has gone back to normal  - which simply means you have to work harder to get the returns.’

Another subject that came under close scrutiny was the issue that many sub-Saharan Africa refineries’ future depended a great deal on demands by them for support from African governments.  The conference found that the World Bank-International Monetary Fund policies were inconsistent between different countries, and have resolved to send a delegation to Washington to address this.