US giants ExxonMobil and Chevron target Algerian shale gas

As the chairman of the Algerian hydrocarbon resources assessment agency (Alnaft) Samir Bekhti told Bloomberg, negotiations are currently underway with American companies on commercial and technical terms. Algeria, a country with declining production and rapidly growing demand for energy, dreams of repeating the success of Texas in extracting shale gas, which has turned the United States into one of the world's largest exporters. Algeria ranks third in the world in terms of recoverable shale oil reserves, behind only China and Argentina and ahead of the United States. The first attempts to develop shale gas were made back in 2016, but most of these reserves are located in the far south, on the mainland part of the country, far from the northern Mediterranean coast and major cities, making any attempts to develop them extremely expensive. In addition, shale production requires large volumes of water, which is not enough even for the needs of the inhabitants in the desert. As a result, Algeria has been looking for partners for years to provide shale production technology and investment. The North African country is one of the leading suppliers of oil and gas to southern Europe after the EU abandoned Russian energy resources. It is connected to Italy and Spain by three gas pipelines, which gives Algeria an advantage over LNG suppliers such as Qatar, but due to falling production and the lack of new discovered reserves, the pipelines are currently not running at full capacity. In addition to the United States, Chinese companies are actively interested in Algeria's shale resources. In July, Sonatrach agreed with the Chinese group Sinopec to conduct exploration in another shale-rich area. In addition, traditional Algerian partners such as Italy's Eni, France's TotalEnergies SE and QatarEnergy participated in the recently held first exploration and production tender in 10 years.

“We want to unlock this potential and start working with those who have experience, regardless of whether they are Chinese, Americans or Europeans,” added S. Bekhti.