‘Oil will stay higher than $100’

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Johannesburg - The price of oil will remain more than $100 a barrel for the rest of 2013, Angolan Petroleum Minister Jose Maria Botelho de Vasconcelos said.

“For this year, yes, everything indicates that the price will be maintained, although there are many variables in the market,” Vasconcelos said yesterday in an interview in Luanda, the capital.

“The most important thing is that the price is over $100 a barrel.”

Brent crude has averaged $113.26 a barrel so far this year, compared with $111.66 in all of 2012.

The average of Brent, Dubai and West Texas Intermediate crude will be $99.17 this year and $96.78 in 2014, according to the International Monetary Fund. Angola’s oil output of about 1.8 million barrels a day is Africa’s largest after Nigeria.

The southwest African country is a member of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, which meets May 31 in Vienna to determine the group’s production quota and select a new secretary-general.

Any discussion of quotas for individual countries would depend on the situation, Vasconcelos said.

OPEC’s output has sometimes exceeded its own limit of 30 million barrel a day by about 1 million barrels daily and there hasn’t been an effect on the price, he said.

Angola LNG, a $10 billion liquefied natural-gas plant that was supposed to start more than a year ago, has been delayed by engineering adjustments after unexpected test results in October, Vasconcelos said.

Baptista Sumbe, board member of Sonangol EP, the state energy company, said February 25 construction would be completed in four to six weeks, followed by a decision on when the first fuel would be shipped.

Destination Angola

The liquefied natural-gas carrier Soyo signaled March 11 that its next destination is “off Angola,” an 18-day trip from its location in Malaysia, according to IHS Fairplay ship- tracking data compiled by Bloomberg.

Vasconcelos said he wasn’t aware of the ship’s movements.

The facility, with a capacity of 5.2 million metric tons a year, is located at the mouth of the Congo River on the country’s north border.

Sonangol has a 22.8 percent stake in the Angola LNG plant.

Chevron Corp. owns 36.4 percent, while Total SA, BP Plc and Eni SpA each hold 13.6 percent, according to the project’s website. - Bloomberg News