The African Refiners Association (ARA) will hold its seventh yearly conference in Cape Town from March 18 to 22.
The ARA is a Swiss-regis- tered nongovernmental orga- nisation that represents refiners and storage, distribution and marketing companies, as well as petroleum regulators from Africa. Its annual general meeting will be held for the sixth time, also in Cape Town, as part of the ARA conference – the only international conference concentrating on the Pan-African downstream oil market.
The conference, themed Investing in Infrastructure, has the primary objective of considering how to invigorate investment in the refining and distribution infrastructure of African countries.
“The ARA’s aim is to promote an orderly process to improve product qualities, develop the rapidly expanding African distribution infrastructure, find regional optimisation across borders and develop and train our human capital resources,” says Angolan national oil company Sonangol VP and ARA president Anabela Fonseca.
Key international executives involved in the future of the industry will be among the speakers at the conference, expressing their views on possible solutions in the context of the malaise confront- ing worldwide downstream oil activity, owing to volatile and historically low levels of refining profitability.
PetroSA CEO Nosizwe Nocawe Nokwe-Macamo will deliver the opening address. PetroSA is an investor in the Mthombo refinery project, in Port Elizabeth, which is one of several new refineries to be built in Africa to improve the continent’s overall refining capacity.