Algeria’s state oil and gas company KBR, a former Halliburton subsidiary, signed a $2,88-billion deal on Saturday for a liquefied natural gas plant.
The Skikda plant, on Algeria’s eastern Mediterranean coast, will be the country’s largest liquefied natural gas (LNG) facility, with a capacity of 4,5-million tonnes of LNG a year, according to state-run Sonatrach. It will be on the site of a Sonatrach refinery wrecked by a gas tank explosion in 2004 that killed 27 people.
Work on the new plant begins in September, and it is scheduled to start production in 2011. The gas will come from the Hassi R’Mel field in the Sahara Desert in southern Algeria, according to the deal.
John Rose, executive vice-president of KBR, and Abdelhafid Feghouil, vice-president of Sonatrach, signed the contract in Algiers in the presence of Energy Minister Chakib Khelil.
Khelil expressed hope that the plant would allow Algeria to boost its production capacity and its sales to lucrative European markets.
Algeria, a member of the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries, is one of the world’s largest exporters of natural gas and derives most of its income from the sale of hydrocarbons.
Houston-based KBR, formerly known as Kellogg, Brown & Root, is a military contractor and engineering and construction company that split from Halliburton in April. KBR and Halliburton have drawn criticism because of KBR’s Pentagon contracts to be the sole provider of food and shelter services to the military in Iraq and Afghanistan. Democrats in Congress have claimed KBR benefited from ties to United States Vice-President Dick Cheney, who once led Halliburton. – Sapa-AP