French Ready to Assist Algeria

The Algerian minister of energy and mining met with his french counterpart yesterday in Algeria. Algeria's Chakib Khelil revealed that the extension of the gas pipeline from Spain to France will increase Algerian gas exports to about 4bn cu. m. in 2007 and to 10bn cu. m. in 2010. He said that Algerian-French partnership was developing continuously in the area of energy, including electricity, such as the power plant in Oum El Bouaghi which produces 300 MW of electricity, as the bid for this plant was won by the French company Alsthom had won the bid for that plant.

The minister added that France had expressed its readiness to help Algeria make up for the losses it incurred as a result of the explosion at the gas complex in Skikda. Chakib Khelil had this to say on the subject:

"There are many French companies, including Total and others, which are involved for example in engineering or which deal with problems related to industrial insurance. As regards Total for instance, it has gas liquefaction operations in many countries and it can therefore give us some assistance in this area in order to help us study what happened in the area and help us with new ideas to enable us to deal with such problems in the future."