Sonatrach signed a processing contract on Monday January 15th with an Italian refinery to refine its petroleum before repatriating it. This option should allow Algeria to reduce its invoice for imports of refined products, promises the national company. The CEO of Sonatrach, Abdelmoumen Ould Kaddour, explained earlier this week that this operation was to rent the equipment of the Italian refiner on site to carry out refining operations in Italy. Lack of sufficient infrastructure to meet the growing demand internally, Algeria has been forced in recent years to import petroleum products. The country now imports more than 15 million tons of fuel per year, compared with local production of 11.5 million tons. After spending $ 800 million on fuel imports in 2016, Algeria tripled its spending in 2017 ($ 2.5 billion). “Our goal is to reduce our fuel imports, they are too high”, Ould Kaddour told reporters on Tuesday. Algeria “can not continue to import $ 2 billion a year in petroleum products”, says the CEO of Sonatrach.
