The Director General of the state oil and gas company Sonatrach, Taoufik Hakkar, stated that Algeria cannot compensate Europe for gas supplies from Russia.
“Now we have several billion cubic meters of gas that cannot replace Russian gas. On the other hand, given the pace of exploration, our capacity will double in four years, providing promising prospects for our European customers.” .
Hakkar explained that Sonatrach plans to invest about $40 billion in oil and gas exploration and production from 2022 to 2026. He added that three new oil fields have been discovered since the beginning of the year, one of which contains about one billion barrels.
Algeria is one of the ten largest gas producers in the world. In May 2020, before the restrictions were introduced under OPEC +, the country produced about 1.3 million barrels per day, in February 2022 – 982 thousand barrels.
