Total and OiLibya opened a joint venture lubricant blending and storage facility in Egypt this month. Both companies said they expect the project to help expand their sales in the North African country.
The project is located on a 34,000-square-meter site in Borg El Arab, Egypt, near Alexandria, and operates under the name Oil Products Storage and Blending Alexandria, in which Total and OiLibya own 65 percent and 35 percent stakes, respectively. The blending plant has capacity to produce 40,000 metric tons per year of finished lubes. The site has 23 storage tanks with combined capacity of 8,000 cubic meters and a laboratory for quality control and oil analysis. It employs 50 people and cost approximately U.S. $20 million.
Total has had a wholly owned subsidiary in Egypt since 1998 but until now has not had any lubricant production capability there. Officials said they opted for a joint venture facility because doing so made it more practical to gain economies of scale. They also noted that the French company has a history of working with OiLibya on projects that include storage facilities.
By reliably delivering specified quantities of products of consistent quality, the facility offers a major competitive advantage in the market and will support the growth of our lubricants business line, the most profitable segment in our portfolio, said Thomas Rebeyrol, managing director of Total Egypt .
OiLibya subsidiary Libya Oil – Misr has operated in Libya since 1994. A supplier of lubricants and other oil products, the business has been growing and expects that the joint venture project will allow it to continue doing so.
Over the past ten years, Oilibyas business magnitude has grown rapidly in the Egyptian market, said Ibrahim Bugaigis, chairman and chief executive officer of Tripoli-based Libya Oil. In order to meet this growing demand, the corporation decided to invest in the OPSBA production facility in Borg El Arab – Alexandria.
OiLibya is the brand name of Libya Oil Holdings, an integrated oil company owned by the Libyan government.