Algeria’s state-owned fuel company, Sonatrach, announced that it achieved profits of 400 million euros (444 million dollars) in 2022.
Sonatrach stated that its CEO, Toufik Hakkar, conducted a supervisory visit to the Augusta refinery on the island of Sicily, Italy, on Monday and Tuesday to inspect the production operations and monitor the projects registered there.
The statement released by the company explained that Hakkar received a detailed presentation about the achievements recorded in 2022, with the production level reaching 7.9 million tons of fuel and various petroleum derivatives.
According to the same source, the refinery’s business figure (total revenue) reached 7.2 billion euros (8 billion dollars) last year, while operating costs were estimated at 6.8 billion euros (7.55 billion dollars).
The Algerian judiciary is currently investigating the government’s acquisition of this oil refinery in 2018, which led to the removal of the former CEO of Sonatrach, Abdelmoumen Ould Kaddour, from the United Arab Emirates in the summer of 2021.
In December 2018, Sonatrach announced the acquisition of the Augusta oil refinery, which was then owned by American ExxonMobil, for 700 million dollars.
Ould Kaddour left Algeria in 2019 after being dismissed from the presidency of the company in April of the same year.
The refining capacity of the Augusta refinery is 200,000 barrels of oil per day (10 million tons annually), and it has three oil terminals (warehouses) located in Palermo, Naples, and Augusta.
