Luanda — 200 million US dollars, such is the cost of assembling a new gasoline production unit attached to the Luanda refinery, revealed on Wednesday the deputy director general of the Italian oil company "ENI", João Silva.

Speaking on Wednesday, in Luanda, on the sidelines of the "Angola: Oil and Gas 2019" conference, the official stressed that the benefit of the project is the transformation of naphtha into gasoline.

A high-value and highly sought-after product in Angola, naphtha will therefore be produced in the refinery itself and sold at a low price, he said.

The Luanda refinery is a company attached to the National Hydrocarbons Company "Sonangol".

On Tuesday, in Luanda, an agreement to award the project for the new gasoline production unit was signed by ENI and Sonangol.

This agreement awarded the contract for the execution of the project to the construction company Kinetics Technology "KT", winner of the public tender proposed for the assembly of the refinery.

Awarding this contract to KT will enable the refinery to quadruple its gasoline production from 300 to 1,200 tons per year.

The construction of this new production unit for this light petroleum liquid will last two and a half years, which means that, from 2011, Angola could reduce its gasoline import needs.