Sonatrach Will Neither Retreat, Nor Abandon The Augusta Refinery

The national oil company, Sonatrach, gave strong signals of rejecting the decision to abandon or retreat from the Augusta refinery on the Italian island of Sicily, where it inaugurated a new facility a few days ago as part of the company’s development plan.

In this context, a delegation of the Board of Directors of Sonatrach’s Augusta Refinery in Italy ended a visit to the refining facilities and warehouses, a few days after the accident of the black smoke emission from one of the refinery’s columns.

Sonatrach’s Oil Refinery in Italy (Augusta) published on its Linkedin account that representatives of the refinery’s board of directors completed a visit to its facilities last week, and they are, respectively, Saleh Bouaziz, Chairman of the Board, and Board Member Laadj Zayed, in the presence of the Managing Director and CEO of the refinery, Rosario Pistorio.

“The visit was an opportunity for the delegation to meet with members of the management and administration staff and to visit the refinery’s facilities and warehouses in Augusta”, it wrote.

According to the same source, Saleh Bouaziz, Chairman of the Board of Directors of Sonatrach Refinery in Italy (Sonatrach Raffineria Italiana), inaugurated, during the same visit, a new warehouse in the refinery that was designed for the modern, efficient and safe management of all supply operations.

It is clear from these steps that the National Hydrocarbon Company is proceeding with the refinery development project and achieving profitable financial returns from it, given the sequence of inauguration and development operations months ago, similar to the processes of conformity with environmental and sustainability standards obtained by the refinery and the launch of a feasibility study for the project to capture carbon dioxide emitted from the refinery and converting it to liquid fuel, in cooperation with the Polytechnic University of Turin.

The visit of the delegation of the Board of Directors of the Augusta Refinery to its facilities in Sicily, Italy, came a few days after an accident in the refinery, which was represented by the rising of a black cloud from one of the refinery stacks, which was seen from a distance of tens of kilometres.

A statement by the authorities of Augusta on the island of Sicily published on its Facebook page, and which was viewed by Echorouk, that a temporary accident was reported at the Sonatrach refinery, which is a technical glitch that was quickly brought under control, but it could result in a possible activation of the flame or smoke, explaining that there is no danger related to the population and as a result of this accident Sonatrach declared: “We will neither retreat nor abandon the Augusta refinery”.