Gas production restarts at Algeria field

12 July 2018
State-owned operator Sonatrach had awarded a contract to boost output from the depleting field

Algeria’s state-owned energy company Sonatrach has marked the restart of production from the North African country’s Alrar gas field.

Sonatrach in 2013 awarded the main engineering, procurement and construction (EPC), and commissioning contract to boost output from the field located in eastern Algeria, close to the border with Libya, to a joint venture (JV) of the UK’s Petrofac and Italy’s Bonatti.

The main driver of the contract was to add a new compressor station and revamp an existing one, to boost the field's production from 16 million cubic metres a-day (cm/d) to 24.7 million cm/d.

The scope of work also included the engineering, procurement, construction and commissioning services for the development of new separation and booster compression facilities.

The value of the EPC contract won by the JV is estimated to be $650m.

The Alrar gas field was explored in the early 1970s and developed in the following years.

With this field life extension project, Sonatrach is aiming at maintaining the plateaued production of this depleting asset, and to compensate for the natural pressure drop of the field after years of production.

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