Namdock wins Angolan Navy Maintenance Contract
In September 2019, in a milestone agreement, Namdock concluded a contract to maintain and repair the vessels of the Marinha de Guerra Angolana (MGA), the Angolan Navy.According to Namdock’s Commercial and Operations Manager, Willie Esterhuyse, although the contract has been concluded, the exact date when the vessels will be arriving in Walvis Bay has not been finalized, it is anticipated that this will be early in 2020.In terms of this agreement, Namdock will take two Angolan Navy vessels into its dry docks initially.
Angola: Tender for 12 Offshore Oil Blocks
Angolan state oil company Sonangol plans to launch a tender for licences to explore 12 new offshore oil blocks in 2015, state news agency Angop cited Oil Minister Jose Botelho de Vasconcelos as saying on Friday. Seven of the new blocks will be located in the Namibe Basin and the remaining five in the Lower Congo Basin, a Sonangol spokesman told Reuters. Angola is Africa's biggest oil producer after Nigeria, with international majors such as France's Total, Italy's ENI, Britain's BP, and U.S. firms Chevron and Exxon Mobil among the main operators in the country. Angop cited Vasconcelos, who was speaking at an oil conference in Moscow, as reiterating Angola's goal of ramping up production to 2 million barrels per day (mbpd) by 2015, from an average of 1.73 mbpd last year.
5 Million Tons Per Year Expected from Angola’s LNG Project
The Angola LNG (liquid natural gas) project is expected to produce 5 million tons of gas per year, as of 2012, the country’s oil minister, Desidério Costa, said in Luanda recently. He added that Angola would gain from environmental conservation as well as from the sale of gas. Cited by Angolan news agency Angop, Costa said that Angolan government had prioritized the progressive reduction of the amount of gas burned off in oil activities, with the aim of using it entirely for domestic and industrial use by 2010. [Source: http://www.macauhub.com.]
Suspected Pirates Handed Over to Kenya
The United States Navy handed over suspected Somali pirates it captured off the coast of Somalia after firing warning shots at their ship, in the first sign of a military crackdown on Somalia’s anarchic coastal waters. According to www.angolapress-angop.ao, the suspects, detained at a police station in the coastal city of Mombasa, were handed over to the police on January 29 and could be tried within the following days. A missile destroyer, the USS Winston S. Churchill, and other U.S. naval forces in the area located the pirate ship after receiving a report of a piracy attempt on January 20. After unsuccessful attempts to contact the ship, the pirate ship finally stopped after the destroyer fired warning shots, and the crew effectively surrendered.
