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President Abdelaziz Bouteflika may be gone, but demonstrators continue to call for radical change to a system dominated by ‘deep state’ players, including a genuine crackdown on corruption. Senior establishment figures are trying to persuade the popular ‘Hirak’ street protest movement that the system can reform itself, with assurances that recent scandals such as the Kamel El-Bouchi cocaine affair and older cases including the collapse of Khalifa Bank should be revisited.

The Groupement Isarene joint operating group of Sonatrach, Petroceltic and Enel has given Petrofac an engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contract worth around $1bn for the Ain Tsila development project. The Ain Tsila development had run into delays following the takeover of Petroceltic by Worldview Capital Management in 2016.

Further dramatic events took place in Algiers on 26 March, when army chief Lieutenant General Ahmed Gaïd Salah said the constitution’s Article 102 should be invoked to disqualify infirm President Abdelaziz Bouteflika from hanging on in the presidency and another senior power-broker, Major General Athmane ‘Bachir’ Tartag, resigned. The Presidency’s efforts to negotiate a regime-friendly outcome involving senior diplomats Lakhdar Brahimi and Ramtane Lamamra have angered crowds who continue to fill Algerian streets.

The announcement that Abdelaziz Bouteflika would not seek a fifth term in the planned 18 April presidential election answered only some critical questions about Algeria’s immediate future. It showed that the ruling factions were not prepared to turn the state’s mighty armoury on peaceful demonstrators to keep the 82-year-old invalid in power.

The energy industry will predictably express concern at the prospect for the reforms and investor-friendly policies promoted with increasing vigour since Abdelmoumen Ould Kaddour became head of state energy giant Sonatrach in 2017. Buffeted by years of crisis that stalled critical oil and gas projects, it is unlikely any incoming government will wittingly do harm to the Algerian economy’s main source of revenue, but more change seems inevitable.

On 20 February, Neptune Energy announced that Groupement TouatGaz, its joint venture with Sonatrach, had achieved first gas at its Touat project in south-west Algeria as part of the project commissioning process. The company said full commercial export production would start by the end of H1 2019. The development of eight gas fields and a gas processing plant near Adrar in the Sbâa Basin will produce around 75,000boe/d (450mcf/d) at plateau.

The Algiers refinery formally reopened on 21 February following refurbishment work carried out by China Petroleum Engineering and Construction Corporation. A contract for the work was awarded to TechnipFMC in 2010, but in 2015 the contract was cancelled due to delays. The refurbishment will increase capacity from 3.6m t/yr to 5.4m t/yr, enabling Algeria to halt products imports from H2 this year, according to Sonatrach. Sonatrach chairman Abdelmoumen Ould Kaddour told the inauguration ceremony that Algeria hoped to launch products exports from 2021.

After more than a decade when Sonatrach senior management was cowed by allegations of severe corruption and fled from confrontation with commercial realities, the giant corporation is now rapidly implementing a new vision. Abdelaziz Bouteflika, now in the 20th year of his presidency, has not yet announced formally whether he will contest the election scheduled to take place in April. Following a severe stroke in 2013, the 81-year-old has been seen in public only a handful of times since his re-election in 2014, always either seated or in a wheelchair.

Sonatrach and Eni on 25 November inaugurated a 10MW solar plant at the Bir Rebaa North (BRN) oilfield. At the ceremony, led by Sonatrach chairman Abdelmoumen Ould Kaddour and Eni chief executive Claudio Descalzi, Eni and Sonatrach signed an agreement to build a research and development laboratory at the BRN site to test solar and hybrid technologies in a desert environment.

Sonatrach subsidiary Entreprise Nationale de Génie Civile et Bâtiment signed two contracts totalling $700m with UK services company Petrofac on 27 November for work to increase the production capacity of the Tinhert gas fields in the Illizi region. The first contract, valued at 10.77bn dirhams ($100m), covers a gas gathering network to connect 36 new wells, with work expected to take 31 months. The second, valued at 60bn dirhams, is for a new central processing facility, with work expected to take 36 months.

One of Algeria’s few privately financed infrastructure projects has formally broken down after years of problems, with state energy giant Sonatrach and water company L’Algérienne des Eaux telling a group led by Malaysia’s Malakoff Corporation they are terminating their water purchase agreement (WPA) for the troubled Souk Tleta desalination plant. The reverse osmosis plant in Tlemcen province began commercial operations in 2011 under a 25-year contract, but has been out of operation since 2016; before that it never treated anything like its 200,000 m3/d capacity to process sea water, which was intended to produce a nominal 71,400 m3/d of drinking water.

Sonatrach and Turkey’s Ronesans Holding have announced they are to invest $1.2bn-$1.3bn to build a polypropylene plant in Ceyhan industrial zone in southern Turkey. Ronesans chairman Erman Ilicak said the plant would produce 450,000 t/yr of polypropylene, with propane gas to be supplied by Sonatrach under a 15-year contract.The contract points to a shift in strategy by Sonatrach, which earlier this year announced a refinery project in Italy, which will take Algerian feedstock.

Industry regulator the Commission de Régulation de l’Electricité et du Gaz (Creg) has issued a build-own-operate tender for 150MW of solar photovoltaic (PV) projects in the eastern wilayas on the northern edge of the Sahara. Participants must use Algeria-registered EPC and operations and maintenance contractors, and locally produced equipment.A key evaluation criterion will be the cost per kWh. Creg will set price ceilings, which it said would provide a “benchmark” for investors, while encouraging them to set prices as low as possible.

The late October Algeria Future Energy Summit, held in Algiers, provided the platform for Sonatrach chairman and chief executive (PDG) Abdelmoumen Ould Kaddour to register his control over the hydrocarbons sector and the national company’s closer relations with international oil companies (IOCs) – and notably with European giants, several of whom have been discouraged by Algiers’ stingy terms and faltering policy implementation over the past decade. Ould Kaddour signalled returning confidence in Algeria’s hydrocarbons sector by signing eye-catching upstream agreements, including a deal that could push ahead controversial shale development plans and offshore exploration.

The Algerian authorities have continued to sign new deals in the upstream and downstream sectors while advancing their more controversial agenda of exploiting shale resources despite public opposition. Preparations are building for a policy announcement in December which could open the way to further developments next year. On 7 October, Sonatrach, Total and Repsol completed their agreements to jointly develop the Erg Issouane gas field and market the gas. The field is located on the TFT Sud permit south of the partners’ existing Tin Fouyé Tabenkort (TFT) field.