Sonatrach: Offshore Exploration 'At Seismic Stage'

State producer Sonatrach said last week that exploration offshore Algeria is at the stage of evaluating seismic data. The country in the past fortnight has declared a 200-mile exclusive economic zone.

In a statement to state news agency APS, Sonatrach CEO Abdelmoumen Ould Kaddour said his company offshore the cities of Bejaia and Oran is "at the seismic stage... evaluating with our partners." Results would be used to draw up a programme in order to look for other data and finally to drill, he added. No timeline was indicated by him in the report, nor whether gas or oil are the primary target.

All current partners – listing US Anadarko, French Total, Italian Eni and Norwegian Statoil as examples – "are interested in joining Sonatrach in order to drill offshore Algeria," he said. His March 28 statement though did not refer back to an agreement signed in February 2017 under which, according to Eni CEO Claudio Descalzi on March 1 2017, Sonatrach agreed to explore offshore Algeria in new blocks jointly with Eni and ExxonMobil.  

A presidential decree was published March 21 in the country's Official Journal number 18 (pages 4 to 6) setting up an exclusive economic zone (EEZ) extending 200 miles (370 km) from its coast. Although no map is included, the decree cites both its offshore borders with Tunisia and Morocco. It says that, in the EEZ, "Algeria exerts its sovereign rights and jurisdiction according to the dispositions of the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, notably part five." 

The UN text's article 56 explains these as "sovereign rights for the purpose of exploring and exploiting, conserving and managing the natural resources," including subsea resources plus wind and wave power.