Algeria has announced that it will invite bids from global energy companies for its oil and gas blocks in January and February 2013
Algeria, Africa’s fourth-largest oil producer, will open bidding under the conditions of a hydrocarbons law, said Khelil Ouahmed, director of gas affairs at the state hydrocarbons regulator Alnaft.
“The last bid did not yield good results, so we spoke to the foreign companies and they said there were technical and economic problems as well as problems related to rights,” Ouahmed said.
Ouahmed explained that the new law, which is set to be approved and rolled out before the end of 2012, will help guarantee the profitability of investments and will relate taxes to the size of the discovery.
Algeria, which is a member of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries with average crude outputs of 1.2mn boepd, granted two of the 10 permits in March 2011.
