In Focus | Angola
Battle rages over Swiss oil refinery removal plan
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Angola's Cabinda mega refinery project, which was hatched as a way of ending the embarrassing petrol shortages which regularly paralyse Africa's second biggest oil producer, has attracted all the major international operators, thanks to the financial and oil supply guarantees offered by President João Lourenço. The rush for the contract has quickly turned into a free-for-all, however, which risks tarnishing the reputations of Angolan state oil company Sonangol and its Libyan counterpart Tamoil.
After having kept engineers, traders and bankers busy for more than a year, the monumental refinery project which President João Lourenço wants to see built in the plain of Malembo in Cabinda Province, is now providing work for the lawyers in London. United Shine, the Hong Kong company which won the international tender call for realisation of the project in 2018, has been dropped at the eleventh hour and is now preparing to start arbitration proceedings against the Angolan state before the end of
