Cabinda — The Cabinda deputy governor for the Technical Sector, Guilherme Pereira, said that the arrival of equipment for the assembly of the Cabinda Refinery, on the Malembo plain, represents a "breath of fresh air," as it will mitigate the fuel shortage phenomenon in the region.
Guilherme Pereira, who on Sunday witnessed the arrival at the Massabi (Cacongo) border of the Cabinda Refinery equipment (which had left the port of Ponta-Negra, in the Republic of Congo), said that the government of Cabinda had created the technical, human and security conditions that had allowed for the successful arrival of such sensitive and costly equipment to the Malembo/Cabinda plain.
He said that the population of the municipality of Cacongo witnessed and the taxi drivers that make the Massabi/Cabinda route, vice-versa, noted the movement of means with containerised cargo and other equipment along the Massabi/Malembo stretch.
In his turn, the member of Sonangol's Executive Commission for Refining and Petrochemicals, Faustino Conde Pongo, said the first phase of the commitments undertaken had been carried out with the timely arrival, this Sunday, of the equipment at the Cabinda refinery, when the forecast was for the end of June.
After the tests carried out in Houston (USA), the material for the Cabinda refinery is already in Malembo," he said.
He said that the equipment is for the first phase and within two weeks they will begin to be installed and the process will be completed in the next few months.
He indicated that already at Malembo/Cabinda the distillation tower, the main module for refining crude oil, the CDUs-equipment for processing crude oil and the connections to facilitate rapid assembly were already in place.
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In this first phase of the refinery, the tower is the main equipment that is sensitive and difficult to transport, so once it has been installed other equipment is awaiting its arrival to complete the process.
According to Sonangol figures, in the first phase it expects to process 30,000 barrels of crude oil per day.
He said that the Cabinda refinery being operational would bring relief to the region's youths because it would employ 70 percent of the workforce, out of a total of around 2,000 indirect jobs and 400 direct jobs.
The recruitment process will end at the end of June, and then area selection will begin, followed by training.
The Cabinda refinery will have a processing capacity of 60,000 barrels per day as soon as the second and third phases are completed.
