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Algeria: Sonatrach Ensures

This budget is part of the group’s strategy for supplying the national market with petroleum products, indicates the National Petro-Gas Company.

Sonatrach is Algeria’s all-risk insurance. It is the lifeblood of its economy. It provides him with most of his financial income. It is โ€œone of the powerful levers of national sovereigntyโ€ declared the President of the Republic. Sonatrach is “the shield that protects Algeria after its armed forces, activists and citizens”, indicated Abdelmadjid Tebboune. The national hydrocarbons company has just proved once again that it is the launching pad for this Algeria which aspires to rise to the rank of powerfully industrialized nations with the well-being of its citizens as a major concern.

This is the goal assigned by the national petro-gas company to the financial envelope of 11 billion dollars, under its five-year plan 2022-2026, for the development of the petrochemical and refining industries. This budget is part of the strategy of the Sonatrach group for supplying the national market with petroleum products, namely petrochemical raw materials for industry in general, and SMEs-SMIs in particular, but also to reduce import and currency transfers, indicating the direction of the methods and operations division of the refining and petrochemicals (RPC) activity within the group, Miloud Amara. “Sonatrach has devoted an amount of 11 billion USD to develop the RPC activity, planned within the framework of the budget of

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โ€œEconomic issuesโ€ which had as its theme โ€œThe petrochemical and refining industries in Algeria… the new strategy of the Sonatrach group for the development of these industriesโ€. An opportunity to share the “arsenal” and the human potential available to the National Hydrocarbons Company in this highly sensitive and strategic area.

Sonatrach currently has seven petrochemical complexes for processing on a national scale which has more than 3,000 permanent employees, including two complexes 100% owned by the group, and five others carried out within the framework of partnerships, revealed for its part, the director of the petrochemical operations division, Hacรจne Lama. What did they produce? “These complexes made it possible to develop nearly 5 billion m3 of natural gas during the year and export more than 1 billion dollars in petrochemical products in 2019”, he said, stressing that this figure should be multiplied in 2022.

How does the future look? The strategy adopted in the short and medium term would consist in concretizing a program of realization of six petrochemical development projects within the framework of the implementation of the projects of valorization of hydrocarbons traced by the government in order to establish a petrochemical industrial fabric in Algeria and reduce the import bill for petrochemical products, announced Hacรจne Lama; recalling in this wake the realization of three projects by Sonatrach and three others within the framework of the partnership with foreigners.

There is the MTBE (Methyl tert-butyl ether) project, in the industrial zone of Arzew, used as an additive to improve the production of unleaded gasoline at the level of refineries and thus renounce its importation. The second project involves the construction of a linear alkyl-benzene (LAB) production unit in Skikda.

Used in the manufacture of detergents, with a production capacity of 100,000 tons/year, which will reduce imports and establish Algeria as an exporter of these products.

The third project, which will also be carried out in Skikda, concerns the naphtha and liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) cracking complex. It has a production capacity of 1 million tons/year. Other projects were mentioned: That of the construction of a petrochemical complex for the transformation of propane into polypropylene, in Turkey as well as a partnership with a French company for the construction of a unit for the production of 550,000 tonnes/year of polypropylene in Arzew. All are based on Algerian human resources, and the attraction of foreign partners with technical expertise.

A “mix” that should open the closed doors of world petrochemical markets.

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