MOSCOW (MRC) - Algeria’s state-owned Sonatrach held meetings with Exxon Mobil last week to discuss possible partnerships, a Sonatrach statement said on Monday, a week after it said it had talked with Chevron Corp., said Reuters.
Sonatrach gave no further details of the September 25 and 26 meetings but the energy producer has said it wants to boost output to increase revenues after a decline in prices hit its budget.
Some 95% of Algeria’s foreign revenue comes from oil and gas sales. Since energy prices dropped in 2014, its foreign exchange reserves have fallen to USD72.6 billion from USD178 billion.
The talks with foreign oil majors come at a sensitive time for Algeria after mass protests in February unseated veteran president Abdleaziz Bouteflika, creating a constitutional limbo that the army hopes to resolve with an election in December.
Algeria, a member of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and a major gas supplier to Europe, has struggled to lift production to meet rising domestic demand, while foreign investors have often baulked at contract terms.
As it was informed earlier, Sonatrach's petrochemicals joint venture with Total has selected Honeywell UOP's C3 Oleflex technology for its proposed 565,000 tonne/year polymer-grade propylene project in Arzew, Algeria. The catalytic dehydrogenation technology converts propane into propylene.
Propylene is a feedstock for producing polyprolypele (PP).
According to MRC's ScanPlast report, Russia's estimated PP consumption in the Russian market was 796,120 tonnes in January-July 2019, up by 11% year on year. Shipments of PP block copolymer and homopolymer PP increased.
STEP was created last year as a 51:49 JV between Algeria’s state oil company Sonatrach and French energy and petrochemicals major Total to develop the Arzew petrochemicals project.
MRC