AfrOil: Former Sonangol director pessimistic about local content

Angola’s government has made a number of efforts to increase local content in oil and gas projects involving international oil companies (IOCs), but its approach has had only limited effect, according to a former director of the national oil company (NOC) Sonangol.

Arnaldo Lago de Carvalho, a businessman who previously served on Sonangol’s board of directors, said last week that he saw the NOC itself as the biggest obstacle to increasing local content in oil and gas projects. “The area of local content is very weak in the country precisely because it was blocked by Sonangol,” he commented.

He also noted that Sonangol had a long-standing practice of directing service contracts to its own subsidiaries, to other government-run entities or to its political allies. Angola’s government has made some changes in this realm by barring the company from serving as the national concessionaire, but the reforms have not had much effect, he said.