Start-up at In Salah Southern Fields

In Salah Gas, a joint venture between Sonatrach (35%), BP (33.15%) and Statoil  (31.85%) has commenced production from the Southern Fields project. The project is the latest stage in development of seven gas fields in central Algeria.

The In Salah project produced first gas in 2004, from three fields in the north of the area – Krechba, Teguentour and Reg. It comprises the development of four dry gas fields – Gour Mahmoud, In Salah, Garet el Befinat and Hassi Moumene. Developing the southern fields will maintain planned production at 9bn cm/y.

Drilling of 26 planned Southern Field wells began in 2014 and is expected to continue until 2018. The project’s scope includes a new 500mn cf/d gas dehydration central processing facility close to Hassi Moumene, brownfield modifications to existing processing facilities at Reg, Teg and Krechba, 150 km of carbon steel export pipelines, 160 km of 13% chrome corrosion resistant alloy infield flowlines and the drilling and tie-in of the 26 new wells.

Production is planned to ramp up to 14.1mn cm/d as wells in the Hassi Moumene and Garet el Befinat field are brought onstream over the next few months.

In Salah has total estimated recoverable resources of 159bn cm of gas (5.6tn cf). Sales gas is marketed by In Salah Gas, jointly owned by the three project partners. Gas is sold to ENEL in Italy.