The association of companies providing services to the Angolan oil industry (AECIPA) on Wednesday rejected the idea that Angola is experiencing an energy crisis, saying that the country has “many reserves and infrastructures that allow for efficient production”.
“At Angolan level we are not in an energy crisis, we are in a process of transition, our oil industry is in a certain way mature, there are almost 50 years of oil production,” said the president of AECIPA, Bráulio de Brito.
According to the official, who was speaking at the 3rd Environment and Development Conference, Angola is producing at the limit of its capacity and has “a lot of oil reserves”.
“Our infrastructures are such that our daily production can be higher than we see today, there is work to be done to make this happen, so we will continue and the operators have the strength to make this happen. We, the service providers, are here to help,” he emphasised.
For the chairman of AECIPA, who was one of the speakers at the round table on the “Energy Crisis, the Extractive Sector and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)”, there is still a way to go, but the country does not have an energy crisis as such, he insisted.
He argued that Angola needs to produce more oil efficiently and cleanly, so that “really,” he noted, the benefits of the revenues generated can be channelled into the country’s social development.
“And so that these revenues can be transformed so that Angola can be independent of oil, so that oil is another pillar of our economy and not the pillar of our economy,” he pointed out.
The chairman of AECIPA also pointed to the need for the country to continue to maintain the oil industry as the “engine for the transition to economic diversification,” admitting, however, that Angola “is not yet ready to live without oil.
“What we have to do is continue to reinforce all the good that the oil industry offers in terms of financial income, in terms of being able to produce with less impact on the environment, with very strong ecological development,” he emphasised.
The leader of the association of service providers in the oil sector in Angola also stressed the importance of the sector being aligned with the SDGs, so that production is more efficient and has less impact on the environment.
Asked during the debate about the participation of AECIPA members in the sector’s technological transformation, Bráulio de Brito said that the sector’s value chain is supported by service providers and they are the driving force behind the technological transition.
The operators “have their role to play, but on the other side of the value chain, we are the ones who carry out the service and we, the service providers, end up being the driving force behind the transition to technological transformation,” he argued.
“Because we’re the ones who really have to use these technologies so that operators can operate and coordinate production processes efficiently with less damage to the environment,” he concluded.
“The Impact of the SDGs on Business” was the motto of the 3rd Environment and Development Conference held today in Luanda by Economia & Mercado magazine.
Angola is the second largest oil producer in sub-Saharan Africa after Nigeria.
Source: Macau Business