Luanda, Republic of Angola
SOMOIL speaker interview for CAPE 2022
By Edson R Dos Santos, Chief Executive Officer of SOMOIL
A 20+ year Industry professional, who began his career in the oil & gas industry in 1999 with ExxonMobil, as Reservoir Engineer, and then moved on to take progressively senior leadership roles within ExxonMobil in Angola and USA (Texas) in the Technical, Operations and Planning areas.
Appointed to the Board of Directors of Sonangol E.P. in 2016 as Executive Director (COO), until 2017.
A graduate of Imperial College (England) with a Degree and a Masters in Petroleum Engineering.
SOMOIL is the only producing privately owned Angolan company at moment, can you summarise this journey for us?
We are very proud of being a 100% Angolan company in the oil and gas sector that celebrated its 21st-anniversary last year. Somoil started off as a small consulting company made of former industry experts. We then moved into the downstream, managing a few Sonangol Petrol stations. In 2005, Somoil moved into the Upstream as a non-operating partner, but the major breakthrough occurred in 2009 when it became an onshore field operator.
It took initiative, courage, and resilience from our “elders” to survive in an environment not used to national companies. In 2020, at our 20th year anniversary, we changed our vision which is now to become the “premier Angolan Integrated Energy Company: SOMOIL today has a diversified and growing portfolio of oil and gas assets in Angola with big plans to grow even further.
SOMOIL is participating as bronze sponsor in CAPE VIII, can you give us some insights to what your presentation will be about?
We´d love the opportunity to share our success story as the only Angolan private company operating today – where we came from, where we are going as a company as well as some of the key success factors.
Lastly, What are the main challenges that SOMOIL is facing in terms of increasing production and fast-tracking development?
We clearly were impacted by COVID. Mobilizing equipment and expats has taken a lot longer than expected. Financing continues to be a challenge, particularly in Angola. However, there remains significant potential and we believe in the potential of the industry to continue to grow.
