Sonatrach is launching a huge reforestation project in Algeria. The Algerian gas giant plans to plant 420 million trees on 560,000 hectares across the country as part of its decarbonization strategy. The overall cost of the project is $1 billion.
Algeria is all the more exposed to global warming as the desert advances and risks swallowing up more areas of the north of the country.
The country’s forests also fall prey every year to flames which reduce thousands of hectares of trees and vegetation cover to ashes.
Forests ravaged by fires
According to a World Bank report published last November, 20,000 hectares of forests are destroyed each year by fires in Algeria. In 2021, 103 people died in the forest fires which devastated Algeria. In 2022, another 54 citizens were killed in fires.
The energy sector is designated as being the one that contributes the most to greenhouse gas emissions, it is logical that it should be involved in the strategy to combat climate change.
According to Abdelkrim Ouamer, director of the group’s health, safety, and environment division, a first pilot project will soon be launched as part of this vast operation, namely the planting of 10 million trees covering an area of 10,000 to 13,000 hectares.
The project will be carried out in partnership with the General Directorate of Forests (DGF), said the manager during his appearance this Monday, July 29 on Algerian Radio.
It is the DGF that will carry out the feasibility study of the project in which the forest sites to be reforested and the tree species to be planted will be defined.
But already, indicated by the manager within Sonatrach, it has been decided that part of this operation will be integrated into the program to revive the Green Dam, the belt of forests which crosses eastern Algeria. to the west over more than a thousand kilometers created in the 1970s to stop the advance of the desert.
Sonatrach has integrated climate change into its governance and implemented a strategy that aims to reduce carbon and methane emissions across the entire chain of its activity with a firm objective: to achieve a balance between its emissions by 2050.
More than 400 million trees across Algeria: Sonatrach’s gigantic project
“We are convinced that gas has a future in the energy transition, launched in Algeria while ensuring that this gas is produced under conditions guaranteeing respect for the environment,” explained the senior executive of Sonatrach.
To contribute to reducing emissions, Sonatrach has identified “mitigation” and “compensation” solutions.
This involves decarbonizing the group’s activities by integrating clean energies and putting an end to “fugitive” emissions which are small leaks in pipes and others. The “energy-intensive” sites were audited to achieve energy efficiency, said the same manager.
Compensation is the contribution to the capture of gases that are “inevitably” emitted by installations in the oil and gas sector.
It is within this strategy that the major reforestation operation to come is part. To put it simply, the hundreds of millions of trees that will be planted will make it possible to capture part of the emissions that will not have been recovered in the chain of activities of the energy sector. “This will offset a large part of our self-consumption,” explained Mr. Ouamer.
Compensation will be done through the “natural sequestration” of the carbon emitted, through the planting of a very large number of trees.
Sonatrach is currently working on two aspects. The first is physical which is the plantation itself. The second is registration and certification which makes it possible to recover credits internationally.
The program has great environmental interest obviously but also economic through the development of agroforestry and job creation, underlined Abdelkrim Ouamer.
