Latest production figures from Norway’s Statoil released 4 May indicate that output from Algeria’s In Amenas gas fields rose to 789mn cfd in Q1. This marks an 85% increase from Q4 and is the highest level since before a terrorist attack struck the plant in January 2013 (see chart 1).

The attack, by far the deadliest to hit Algeria’s oil and gas industry, killed 40 people, and left the plant shuttered for five weeks (MEES, 18 January 2013). Whilst the second of the plant’s three 3bcm/y trains restarted three months later, the third only restarted in July last year. Even then the plant’s output failed to approach its 9bcm/y (870mn cfd) capacity given declining output at the fields supplying the plant. To reach full capacity took the completion last November of a $700mn compression project “designed to enhance production in order to fill the capacity of all three processing trains at the facility,” according to BP, which partners Statoil and Algerian state giant Sonatrach at In Amenas. (CONTINUED - 947 WORDS)