Angola will begin mining the rare metal niobium this year, the Minister of Mineral Resources, Oil and Gas, Diamantino Azevedo, announced on Monday in Luanda.<\/p>\n
Niobium is a rare, strategic metal used to strengthen metal alloys and steel, and it is applied in the aerospace, automotive, steelmaking and civil construction industries, as well as in the manufacture of turbines and medical equipment.<\/p>\n
Speaking to the press at the ceremony marking 32 years since production began in oil block 15, Diamantino Azevedo said that the project, located in the municipality of Quilengues (Hu\u00edla province), has already been completed and is awaiting inauguration.<\/p>\n
He added that the project, which created a thousand direct jobs and 200 indirect ones, should put Angola on the global map for yet another strategic natural resource.<\/p>\n
Once the facility comes into operation, the minister said, Angola should join the small group of countries producing this metal, led by Brazil and Canada.<\/p>\n
According to the official, niobium mining will help bring in foreign currency and diversify the national economy.<\/p>\n
Budgeted at 150 million dollars, the project is the responsibility of Sociedade Niobonga and is expected to produce eight thousand tonnes of ferroniobium and 150 thousand tonnes of sulphuric acid.<\/p>\n
On the same occasion, Diamantino Azevedo announced that work to extend the U\u00edge copper mine begins on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
This is the first modern open-pit copper mine to be inaugurated in Angola since the country’s independence.<\/p>\n
Designed to process four thousand tonnes of raw ore per day, the facility marked the resumption of copper production in the region after more than 50 years of inactivity.<\/p>\n
Increased oil production<\/strong><\/p>\n During his address, the minister challenged operators in the sector to step up investment in order to exceed the production target of one million barrels of oil per day in Angola.<\/p>\n He recalled that over the past nine years the country has tendered 72 oil blocks, and acknowledged that concrete results will take time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Angola will begin mining the rare metal niobium this year, the Minister of Mineral Resources, Oil and Gas, Diamantino Azevedo, announced on Monday in Luanda. Niobium is a rare, strategic metal used to strengthen metal alloys and steel, and it […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":10258,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[92,79],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10260","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-economy","category-first-block"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.negociosdeangola.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10260","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.negociosdeangola.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.negociosdeangola.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.negociosdeangola.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.negociosdeangola.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10260"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.negociosdeangola.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10260\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10262,"href":"https:\/\/www.negociosdeangola.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10260\/revisions\/10262"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.negociosdeangola.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10258"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.negociosdeangola.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10260"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.negociosdeangola.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10260"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.negociosdeangola.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10260"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}