Former Sonatrach CEO Abdelmajid Attar has announced that shale gas should be taken as a lasting measure to Algerian national energy crisis and not a source of income.
Attar said that the country needs to invest in energy alternatives that will be productive enough to ensure internal sustainable energy capacity beyond 2030.
Sonatrach is the largest oil and gas company in Algeria and Africa with operations in exploration, production, pipeline transportation and making of hydrocarbons and their by products.
According to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), natural gas and oil accounts for almost of Algeria’s total domestic consumption.
Algeria is currently on the exploration stage, which will allow the extraction of shale gas if there are no risks involved in doing so.
This is a compulsory stage that every company exploring oil or gas must go through as provided for by article 23a of the hydrocarbons law and supervised by the ministers.
The energy consumption in Algeria is anticipated to increase over the coming years and the country needs to invest in renewable energy.
Algeria is one of the largest producers of shale gas in Africa and the second largest natural gas supplier to Europe. It is estimated to hold approximately the third largest amount of shale gas in the world. In the recent past, production of gas and crude oil production has decreased due to delayed infrastructure projects and new production.
Algeria began oil production in 1958 and became a member of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) in 1969.
Shale gas is produced from a type of sedimentary rock and a source of natural gas in the United States in the past decade and has spread to Canada, Europe, Asia and Australia.
