(Oil Price) – Algeria is set to soon announce a new oil and gas licensing round in which major international firms, including ExxonMobil and Chevron, are expected to take part.
The OPEC member’s national development hydrocarbon agency, ALNAFT, will announce a new licensing round, looking to attract foreign investment and operators in its oil and gas sector, Algerian Energy Minister Mohamed Arkab said on Monday, as carried by Reuters.
Apart from the U.S. supermajors, Italy’s energy giant Eni and China’s state-controlled Sinopec are also expected to bid in the licensing round, according to the newswire.
Algeria, which joined OPEC in 1969, produces around 900,000 barrels per day (bpd) of crude oil currently. The North African producer is part of the OPEC+ agreement looking to manage oil supply to the market.
In recent months, Algeria has been vying to monetize its natural gas resources, especially in exports to Europe, which now has to do without much of the pipeline Russian gas it was consuming before 2022.
Earlier this year, Exxon signed a deal with the Algerian government for exploration at two natural gas fields in the North African country. The supermajor, in partnership with Algeria’s state energy firm Sonatrach, will “study the existing opportunities to develop the hydrocarbon resources in the Ahnet basin and the Gourara basin” in the southern part of the country.
Algeria holds huge conventional natural gas reserves, and it is also estimated to have the third–largest shale gas reserves in the world after China and Argentina.
Most of Algeria’s gas exports are heading to Europe, which is increasingly betting on Africa to import large volumes of pipeline gas and LNG to replace pipeline gas supply from Russia, which was Europe’s top gas supplier before the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Earlier this year, Grain LNG in the UK, Europe’s largest liquefied natural gas terminal, secured a 10-year gas supply deal with Algeria’s Sonatrach.
By Charles Kennedy for Oilprice.com
