TUNISIA - Tunisia's Decision Makers.

For the energy sector and the country's hydrocarbons, the decision making system in Tunisia is quite simple. There are laws for this sector under which technocrats in charge function efficiently. The Ministry of Industry, Energy, Small and Medium Businesses controls the petroleum sector.

In each of the state companies under this ministry, power is held by the chief executive officer (CEO), following the French system. But beyond their specific area of work, the CEOs have little or no influence over the sector as a whole. Tunisia's bureaucracy is highly educated.

The key decisions concerning this sector are taken collectively by the council of ministers, where the weight is political and the balance of power is held overwhelmingly by the President of the Republic, Zine el-Abdine Ben Ali, and his close allies. The technocrats in Tunisia are controlled by the political leadership, under Ben Ali (see Gas Market Trends).

Emphasis in Tunisia's energy policy is on its shift to natural gas, with the prospects of finding major oilfields not encouraging. The country's petroleum law, in effect since the beginning of 2000, includes additional incentives for companies to invest in an integrated venture to produce natural gas from small fields and generate electric power for sale to the state. The system of pricing gas which the government buys from producing operators has been improved considerably (see details in Gas Market Trends Nos. 14-15).

The General Energy Management division at the ministry supervises the sector's state companies. It has three bodies: the Committee for E&P of Hydrocarbons, the Committee for Refining and Oil Products Distribution, and the Committee for Electricity, Gas and Energy Management.