Algeria: gas production will increase by 10bn cubic metres next year

Algeria’s state-owned Sonatrach oil company announced on Wednesday that its gas production is expected to increase by 10 billion cubic metres in 2023, Anadolu has reported. The announcement was made on state radio by Rachid Zerdani, Sonatrach’s director of strategy and planning.

Zerdani explained that the company is developing operations across several oil and gas fields and improving production capabilities. “The current development processes will enable us to increase production by 4 billion cubic metres this year… We expect that production will increase by between 8 and 10bn cubic metres in 2023.”

The Sonatrach official pointed out that Algeria’s total gas production is currently estimated at 130 billion cubic metres per annum, about 50 billion of which are consumed in the domestic market.

Since the beginning of this year, Sonatrach has announced significant oil and gas discoveries in various regions in the south of Algeria. The country has received a lot of interest from Europe over the past few months, as European states search for new supplies to end their dependence on Russian gas.

The Ministry of Energy and Mining in Algiers said a few days ago that Algeria will send an additional 10bn cubic meters of gas to Italy in the coming months. It is expected that gas supplies to Italy could exceed 25bn cubic metres by the end of the year through the TransMed/Enrico Mattei pipeline, which connects Algeria with Sicily via Tunisia. The pipeline has an annual capacity of 32bn cubic metres.

Algeria also supplies Spain with gas through the Medgaz pipeline, a direct link between the two countries. It has an annual capacity of 8bn cubic metres.

READ: Morocco king invited to Arab League Summit in Algeria