| Type | Parastatal |
|---|---|
| Industry | Oil and gas industry |
| Founded | 1976 |
| Headquarters | Luanda, Angola |
| Key people | Manuel Vicente (President of the Administration Council) |
| Owner(s) | Government of Angola |
| Website | www.sonangol.co.ao |
Group Sonangol (Portuguese: Grupo Sonangol) is a parastatal that oversees petroleum and natural gas production in Angola. Sonangol actually had become a fundraising machine of government. The group consists of Sonangol EP (Portuguese: Sociedade Nacional de Combustíveis de Angola, E.P.) and its many subsidiaries. The subsidiaries generally have Sonangol EP as a primary client, along with other corporate, commercial and individual clients. Angola is estimated to have over 5 billion barrels (790,000,000 m3) of offshore and coastal petroleum reserves, and new discoveries are outpacing consumption by a 5 to 1 ratio.
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On the eve of Portuguese Angola's independence from Portugal following the election of a modern democratic government in Portugal in 1976, the company ANGOL (ANGOL Sociedade de Lubrificantes e Combustivels sarl, founded in 1953 as a subsidiary of Portuguese company SACOR) was nationalized and split in two, forming Sonangol U.E.E. and Direcção Nacional de Petróleos. Directive 52/76 instituted Sonangol as a state-owned company with a mandate to manage the country's substantial petroleum and natural gas. Using the extant remains of Texaco, Total, Shell and Mobil's oil works, Sonangol obtained the assistance of Algerian Sonatrach and of Italian Eni.
The New York based NGO Human Rights Watch declared on Dezember 20, 2011, that the Government of Angola should explain the whereabouts of US$32 billion been missing from government funds, though linked to Sonangol. A December 2011 report by the International Monetary Fund revealed that the government funds were spent or transferred from 2007 through 2010 without being properly documented in the budget.[1] It must be assumed, that the missing oil billions have been transferred into foreign investments, mainly in those of the family of Angolan President José Eduardo dos Santos and his daughter Isabel dos Santos.
Today (as of 2006), Sonangol has over 30 subsidiaries and maintains overseas facilities in the following cities:
As the company grew it had a need to obtain services, such as telecommunications services, retail network support, trucking, shipping, data management, scientific, engineering, seismic, and others. The company created subsidiaries to meet these needs. Sonangol and its many subsidiaries have continued to expand into other lines of business. Among the more important subsidiaries are Sonair, MSTelcom and two banks, Banco Africano de Investimentos and Banco do Comércio e Indústria.
Sonangol is an important sponsor of the arts, sports and humanities in Angola and in Africa. On December 12, Reuters reported that Sonangol won the rights to develop the Iraq's Najmah oilfield in a bid held that day. The company's plateau production target for the field in the volatile province of Nineveh is 110,000 barrels per day (17,000 m3/d) (bpd), and the remuneration fee is $6 per barrel. Sonangol had proposed a per-barrel fee of $8.50, but then accepted the Oil Ministry's lower amount.
Sonangol USA, Sonangol London, and Sonangol Asia are the main trading and operations offices for the crude and product cargoes sold on behalf of Sonangol E.P. Each of these offices use a global trading system named SGTS (Sonangol Global Trading System). This system was created for Sonangol by a Houston, USA based software firm named Pineywoods Tech. This system has been in use since 2006. Sonangol Starfish which is located in Brasil, Rio de Janeiro since 22 of March 2010