The new team overseeing Algerias energy industry will go ahead with an oil and gas licensing round this year, broadly sticking to a plan set out by their predecessors, an energy official said.
p>The new team overseeing Algerias energy industry will go ahead with an oil and gas licensing round this year, broadly sticking to a plan set out by their predecessors, an energy official said.
A second energy official told Reuters Algeria needed foreign experience to exploit its oil and gas reserves, a signal likely to reassure international oil companies that in the past few years have faced tougher terms for acquiring acreage.
Last month Algeria appointed a new chief executive of Sonatrach, the state energy firm, and a new energy minister. The new appointees have not said publicly if they plan any changes.
One energy official, who did not want to be identified, told Reuters preparations were underway on a new licensing round and that it was planned "to launch it before the end of this year."
Former energy minister Chakib Khelil had set December this year as the deadline for completing the next round, before he was replaced by Youcef Yousfi, who had a spell as minister in the late 1990s.
The new team has given no indication of whether the terms on offer for international energy companies to acquire oil and gas permits will be changed.
In the last licensing round, completed in December last year, only three out of 10 permits on offer were allocated. Several foreign oil executives have said the financial terms were not attractive enough to warrant a bid.
The official, a senior Sonatrach employee, said the procedure for awarding oil and gas permits would not be changed.
Sonatrach has come under pressure to change the way it awards contracts after the firm's previous chief executive was removed in a corruption investigation that focussed on how contracts were handed out.
The Sonatrach official said procedures would be tightened up for awarding contracts to suppliers and contractors, but this did not apply to allocating oil and gas permits.
"For the awards of contracts covering oil and gas fields, it is still the current law which applies, we cannot change anything," said the second official, who also did not want to be identified.
