APS : Saturday, 30 September 2017
PARIS-Thanks to its 154 subsidiaries, Sonatrach is the only African group that operates in various activities, from oil exploration to fuel station,
said a study carried out by the French Institute of International Relations (IFRI).
The study on the strategies of African national companies, carried out by university professor and chief editor of the news site Africa Energy Intelligence Benjamin Auge, said that Sonatrach was in the face of many challenges and stressed that the group created a real oasis of talents in the machinery of state (…) but it needed cooperation with the private sector to develop its conventional resources.
The study, published Saturday in Paris, focuses on three oil companies of African countries, namely Algeria (Sonatrach), Nigeria (NNPC) and Angola (Sonangol), which produced in 2016 an average of 1.1 million barrels, 2 mb and 1.8 mb per day.
According to the study, these public oil companies should address major challenges to maintain their oil production and attract foreign investments. They had to find new markets for their light crude exports due to the shale oil boom in the United States and the decrease in their imports
As regards Sonatrach, Auge, who focuses his researches on the governance of oil, gas and energy in African countries, said that according to the last figures, Sonatrach made 32 hydrocarbon discoveries of the 33 recorded in 2016 by its own effort.
