A 40-vehicle convoy carrying a dismantled 60-ton oil drilling platform set out from Tunisia on Tuesday on a 400km desert trail to southern Algeria where it will be assembled and put into operation. The caravan was carrying seven main elements of the $55-million platform which will measure nine metres high and eight metres horizontally when assembled, the official Tunisian agency TAP reported. Algeria is the biggest country in the swathe of north Africa known as the Maghreb, with an area of more than two million square kilometres. Oil and gas exports account for 95% of its export earnings and 25% of gross domestic product. – AFP