Algeria plans to invest an average of US$1.5bn each year over the next five years just on upstream exploration, and a total of $65bn on production projects, according to Mohamed Meziane, president and CEO of Sonatrach Algeria, speaking in an exclusive interview to ArabianOilandGas.com.
Chief amongst the company’s upstream plans will be the further development and optimisation of the Hassi Massoud basin.
“Sonatrach has made 75 oil and gas discoveries in the last five years,” said Meziane, adding that his company aims to increase its production capacity to 1.5 millon barrels per day by 2012.
Speaking about the downstream industry in the country, the Sonatrach CEO said that his company is still in talks with French integrated oil giant Total regarding the ethylene cracker which Total won in 2007.
The CEO of Algeria’s biggest company said that Sonatrach is extremely open to international interest in the country’s hydrocarbon industry. “We are ready to discuss with any company, any project on the table. There should be talks and proposals and we will judge each on its merits,” said Meziane.
Algeria will play host to the biggest LNG event in next year’s midstream calendar. “We are preparing ourselves for the LNG 16 conference, which will be hosted in Oran – it will be a very important event for us,” he said.
The full interview will be published in Oil & Gas MIddle East and Petrochemicals Middle East, the region’s leading energy print titles.
