Algeria is reportedly allocating $3.5 billion between 2024 and 2028 to expand the country’s hydrocarbon reserves and increase primary production by intensifying exploration and research efforts.
This amount will also be allocated to improving exploration performance and improving hydrocarbon reservoir exploitation operations using modern technologies such as recovery methods in order to increase the extraction rate.
The development program of the Sonatrach group also allocated $416 million to environmental projects, including $67 million for solar energy projects and $68 million for hydrogen projects.
Algeria is committed to reducing polluting emissions resulting from hydrocarbon sector activity through several investment projects that work to reduce the volume of gas burned in energy facilities or through major afforestation projects, which will be embodied by the Sonatrach group.
Algeria, like other oil and gas exporting countries, seeks to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 7% to 22% by 2030, and reduce the total volume of gas flared to less than 1%.
This will be done through measures and procedures that Algeria is working to implement to monitor and control emissions, in cooperation with national and international partners. The management of the Sonatrach Group also intends to implement an ambitious program for the purpose of natural carbon reservation, with the support of the General Directorate of Forests, to plant 420 million trees over an area of 520 thousand hectares in the south of the country.
This massive afforestation project will be implemented over 10 years, and will combine the fight against climate change, reforestation and social and economic development of the areas concerned, in a way that creates thousands of jobs and improves the environment and living conditions of the population.
In this regard, a specialized committee has been formed, including all parties concerned with reducing methane emissions, to develop a roadmap aimed at creating a national tool for detecting, estimating and reducing methane emissions, and there are several projects underway by Sonatrach and its partners.