BP's contacts with Sonatrach

["Kessaissia, Mazine" <mazine.kessaissia@mail.utexas.edu>]

I am glad JW Sikora pointed out this contract between Sonatrach and BP. BP is 
cuurently the biggest foreign investor in Algeria, all industry sectors 
included, with over $3 billion investment in several hydrocarbon projects. And 
this In Amenas project is one of these three projects and to which I 
personnaly participated within the project management team. I was involved in 
the development phase of this gas field and the reason Halliburton was 
contracted to deliver the production facilities, accomadations and flowlines 
was because Kellogg Brown & Root (KBR) was already chosen to perfrom the same 
work for another BP-Sonatrach gas field in In Salah (Algeria). For a necessary 
synergy between projects, these two service companies were contracted for the 
work. 
I would like to confirm however that Halliburton was not chosen to lay the 
pipeline to Ohanet as it says in the article but it is awarded to Bechtel 
Corporation, the US comapny and world leader in laying pipelines.

The production was initially supposed to be on-stream early 2003, but for 
political reasons (British-Algerian relations) and divergences between 
Sonatrach and BP personnel and management, the work was delayed and in 2001, 
it was put on stand-by and BP had gotten to almost withdraw BP's stake in the 
field, but both companies eventually worked things out together.

The third project of BP in Algeria is the Rhourde El Baguel oilfield (37,000 
bbl/day) previously operated by ARCO (bought by BP in 2000), east of giant 
Hassi-Messaoud oilfield. Although BP has two big gas and condenstae fields 
operated jointly with sonatrach and a small oilfield, the BP's startegy is to 
acquire a stake in another gian oilfield in Algeria (Ourhoud) that covers over 
3.5 billion barrels of recoverable oil reserves.

If anyone is interested in having more information about contracts in the oil 
& gas industry, and particularly just for Algeria, with reagards either to 
technical (wells, facilities, pipeline...)or business considerations (types of 
contracts, joint ventures, PSA, government involvment...), please do not 
hesitate to ask me, I would be glad to help.

Mazine