Contributors
EurAfrican 2023
António Costa Silva
Minister of the Economy and Maritime Affairs Portugal
António Costa Silva was born in Angola in 1952.
He has a degree in Mining Engineering from the Lisbon University Higher Technical Institute, a master’s degree in Petroleum from Imperial College (University of London), a PhD in Petrol Reserve Engineering from Lisbon University Higher Technical Institute and Imperial College.
He is professor emeritus at the Lisbon University Higher Technical Institute, where he also taught Planning and Integrated Management of Energy Resources.
Upon invitation of the Portuguese Government, in 2020 he drafted the Strategic Vision for Portugal’s Economic Recovery Plan for 2020-2030 and presided over the National Steering Committee for the Recovery and Resilience Programme since May 2021.
Chairman of the Partex Executive Committee from 2004 to 2021.
He was Director of Reservoir Engineering and Production at Beicip-Franlab, the corporate branch of the French Petroleum Institute (Paris, 2001-2003) and Executive Director of the Compagnie Géneral de Geophysique in Portugal (1998-2001). He began his professional career at Sonangol (Angola) in 1980, and from 1984 to 1997 he worked at the Portuguese Service Company.
Throughout his career, he was charged with coordinating several international energy projects, particularly the Middle East, Algeria, Mexico, Venezuela, Russia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Brazil, and Angola.
He was selected in 2002 by the International Court of the Stockholm Chamber of Commerce as the expert charged with solving the legal and technical dispute between two of the major oil companies in the world in an oil rig on the China sea.
Since 2018, he has been a member of the Board of Trustees of Aveiro University; he was also Chairman of the Fuel Board of the regulator – ERSE, member of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation Advisory Board and Chairman of the Water Initiative Advisory Board at Católica University in Lisbon.
He was member of the ISCTE- Lisbon University Institute Board of Trustees and the Advisory Board of the Gulbenkian Programme for Development Aid.
He was a guest speaker at international conferences on energy, energy and geopolitics, and has published several articles and papers in the fields of energy, strategy, geopolitics, and international relations.