Building capacity in Angola

To what extent would you say that the upstream sector is going through a revival?
I think the performance of the upstream sector in 2022 will remain at the same level as 2021. It is difficult to analyse how the new projects entering into production might impact the rest of the value chain. The low levels of oil and gas-related financial investments throughout recent years will definitely affect the performance of the upstream sector and of the economy as a whole.
We are currently at a crossroads for oil and for energy. All companies are now focusing on the carbon issue and this will for sure affect the investment in the future. I expect oil and gas companies to become more sustainable than before. This will affect the number of investments and potential big projects, which will increase year by year – but gradually, not exponentially.

Do you see any new opportunities in fabrication maintenance and service maintenance?
It will certainly increase a little bit, but not at the same pace as in the past. When we talk about a maintenance project, it will be partly revamping, also replacement of the affected equipment. We will have opportunities to do all aspects of maintenance.

What are your key activities and projects in-country?
We are not just a manufacturing or construction company. We also provide a range of other services, and this is our commercial approach. The group is one of the main actors in France in terms of industrial cleaning, and in Angola we are working on a cleaning contract, with all equipment dedicated for an ATEX environment and people trained for NORM activities.
We also provide E&I works for integrated projects such as EPC contracts.
We are doing works in the areas of structural, piping and downstream fabrication, as well as fabrication maintenance. Today, we are working on well jumpers for TotalEnergies. In the past, we used to do two or three jumpers per month, but today there isn’t enough demand to do that. We have two big projects for TotalEnergies within the next three years, but no sustainable demand coming from other clients.

Do you see opportunities to become more involved in the downstream sector?
We are not just an oil and gas company; we are also a structural and piping fabrication company, providing services in terms of, for example, fabrication of tanks. In Ivory Coast for instance, we wield a lot of capacity for their storage and distribution. And petromar/”>Petromar and