Nearly 20 months after the Amenas attack, Norway’s Statoil and the joint venture partners are ready to resume ordinary operations at the plant, the company has said.
The corporate executive committee has decided that ordinary rotation is to be resumed at the plant as all defined security measures have been implemented.
In June, the corporate executive committee approved the return of temporary manning to the plant to finalise the implementation of the outstanding security requirements.
The goal was to verify the implementation of the last security measures and to prepare for a resumption of ordinary operation at Ain Amenas. During the autumn of 2013 and early in 2014 it was decided to resume ordinary operations at the other locations in Algeria.
Lars Christian Bacher, executive vice president for Development & Production International, said: “The decision to resume ordinary operations also at Ain Amenas is the result of a thorough and stepwise process of identifying necessary security measures, implementing them and validating that they are in place and operational.”
Since the Ain Amenas attack, Statoil has worked systematically with its partners in Algeria with the aim of resuming ordinary operations in Algeria. The security improvements at Ain Amenas are also based on recommendations of the investigation conducted after the attack.
In parallel with this work, the company has carried out a continuous and comprehensive improvement effort to enhance the general security work in Statoil. The goal of this programme is to achieve considerable improvements both with regard to awareness, organization, systems and use of resources.
Through the security improvement effort at the Algeria plants the joint venture has introduced physical security measures at all operating plants.
The security work, both in Statoil and in the joint venture, has furthermore been reorganized, and the dialogue with Algerian authorities on securing of the plants has been improved. Algerian authorities have also initiated and introduced security measures beyond those implemented by the joint venture.
“We will now, in cooperation with our partners, continue our systematic work to maintain the high level of the security measures, to ensure that we have a good understanding of the security threats and adjust our security measures as required,” said Bacher.
Almost a year and a half after the unprecedented attack on Ain Amenas natural gas plant in Algeria, the facility is seeing a return of foreign oil workers, a good omen for the country’s oil and gas industry.
The Ain Amenas gas facility was attacked by Islamist terrorists on 16 January 2013. After the attack, which reportedly left 40 workers dead including foreigners, several international firms removed their staff from the country in consideration of the political risks.
Ain Amenas produced about 11.5 percent of Algeria’s natural gas output before the attack and the North African state has been steadily bringing the plant back to full resumption, which frees up more of the fuel for export to Europe.
Algeria is by far the biggest gas exporter in Africa, exporting 34.8 billion cubic metres in 2012. Algeria is also the seventh largest gas exporter in the world by pipeline, with most going to Italy and Spain.
The outage of the Ain Amenas gas plant contributed to a 10 percent drop in Algeria’s hydrocarbons production in the first half of 2013, which combined with a slight drop in the oil price led to a 12 percent fall in hydrocarbons revenue over the period.
FEMI ASU
