ALGERIA - Other Fields.

Sonatrach's plan has been to raise the rates of recovery at these and other fields' from 20-30% in 1988 to 65% through gas and water injection, in addition to those already in place. Other fields include Tiguentourine (found in 1956, producing 44.4 deg. API oil from a Devonian Fm); Stah (found in 1971, producing 41.7 deg. oil at a depth of 9,515 ft); Rhourde Nouss (found in 1980, producing 39.7 oil from a Triassic Fm at a depth of 9,850 ft, which is also a gas field); and Rhourde Chegga (found in 1985).

The Gassi Touil oilfield in the El Biod High zone in eastern Algeria, 150 km south-east of Hassi Messaoud, is part of Sonatrach's E&P operations (this is apart from the gas fields in the same area - see following pages). It has gas gathering and compression facilities installed in late 2001 by Sofresid of France (a unit of Bouygues Offshore) under a contract awarded in July 1999. Associated gas is recovered from separation of the oil, carried to a compression station with a capacity of 4.9 MCM/d and operating at a pressure of 152 bars, and then reinjected into oil producing wells.

The field, found in 1961, is said to contain 595m barrels of oil and 6.9 TCF of gas reserves which Sonatrach says are recoverable. In early 2001 a Japanese consortium of JNOC (now part of JOGMEC), Teikoku and Itochu signed with Sonatrach an agreement to appraise and further develop the field. Partly as a Tokyo reward for this and other deals won by Japanese companies, the Japan Bank for International Cooperation  (JBIC) on May 11, 2001 gave Sonatrach a Y18,600m (then worth $152m) cover for 31,100m ($254m) loans without a government guarantee. This was the first time that JBIC ever took on a Sonatrach risk without a government cover on the Algerian side. The loans are to finance a set of projects to stabilise gas production at Hassi R'Mel won by Japanese contractors.