Algeria's New Oil Strategy
Lahouari ADDI
Professor of Political Sociology to the IEP of Lyon
In H. Clement-Moore and Gillipsie, Oil in
the New World Order, chapter 4, University Press of Florida, 1995
Sommaire
Texte intégral
Since the
collapse of oil prices in the mid-1980s, Algeria has attempted to modify its
national petroleum strategy in order to encourage foreign investment in oil and
gas production. This effort was justified by a con stantly growing need for
external resources to meet internal demands created by a growing population and
to defray the increasing budgetary deficit in the public sector. In this
chapter I will attempt to show that the contradictions of the Algerian
economy and the rentier state are po litically sustainable only if the
state attracts a certain level of external resources. These external resources
are required to import food and semi finished products needed for industry. The
new petroleum strategy thus stemmed from the necessities of the Algerian
political-economic system and was not an expression of any basic change in the
political orientations of the regime. To meet my objective, I must first
expose the dysfunctions of the Algerian economy and show that the current
crisis can basically be explained by the political system—regulated as
it is by a neopatrimontal logic and by the redistribution afforded by a rentier
state.
When
Algeria achieved independence from France in 1962, the national economy
displayed all the characteristics of an underdeveloped country suffering the
constraints of dependence. Agriculture dominated the economy both in the
structure of the work force and in the trade balance. The agricultural sector
was typical of a dependent country, divided into a modern sector oriented
toward cash crops for export (wine, citrus, etc.), and a traditional sector in
which self-sufficiency played an important role. Industry was essentially
extractive (minerals, petroleum products) but included a few value-added
activities fed by private investment in areas such as food, textiles,
and leather. Unemployment was kept to a tolerable level by virtue of massive
recruitment into the bureaucracy, emigration to France, and the
precarious opportunities available in the informal sector.
This
economic structure, the legacy of colonialism, began to change in 1970 with the
launching of the first four-year plan, whose objective was to create heavy
industry in order to advance complete industrialization and bring an end to
economic underdevelopment. Between 1967 and 1978, according to the
"Synthese du Bilan Economique et Social" (Ministère de la
Planification et de l'Aménagement du Territoire, Alger 1980), 300 billion
dinars were invested, creating 1.1 million jobs. These new jobs decreased the unemployment rate
from 25 percent to 19 per cent of the active population. During the 1970s two
four-year plans 1970-73 and 1974-77) provided Algeria with a significant
industrial base in the areas of hydrocarbons (condensates, liquefied natural
gas, refined products, liquid hydrocarbons), chemical and petrochemical
industries (paint, detergents, industrial gas, pharmaceutical products),
smelting industries (steel rods and sheets, liquid steel), construction and mechanical
industries (industrial vehicles, agricultural machinery, public works, and
hydraulic equipment), electronic industries (television, refrigerator, and
telephone), light industries (food, textiles), as well as construction
materials, wood, glass, and ceramics. However, investments primarily targeted
petrochemicals and construction materials, and largely neglected consumer
products.
During the
same period, employment other than agricultural grew from 28.3 percent to 48.9
percent of the active population, while agricultural employment fell from 50
percent to 30.4 percent. Income from salaries grew from 5.8 billion dinars,
earned by 1,177,000 employees in 1967, to 33.4 billion dinars, earned by
2,193,000 employees in 1978. In spite of its size, the industrial base created
in the 1970s directly employed only about 150,000 people: about 4
percent of total employment or 11.6 percent of industrial employment. Government
planners opted for frontline technologies over job creation. Nonetheless,
indusrealization has had secondary effects on the construction industry, as
well as trades, services, and public administration, jobs in the construction
sector alone accounted for 30 percent of total employment.
Nevertheless,
though investments were large, results were modest— beyond all
expectations. Between 1967 and 1978, the GNP grew from 40 billion to 86.8
billion dinars, which was very little given the amount of investments. One of
the noticeable traits of Algerian industry was its feeble return on investment.
Industry did not replace hydrocarbons as a major source of revenue, as
government planners had wished. Even more serious was the fact that the newly
created state enterprises, unable to recoup their original investments or cover
their current expenses, generated larger and larger debts. The total deficits
of state-owned businesses grew from 408 million dinars in 1973 to 1.88 billion
in 1978 and reached 110 billion in 1987. (This last figure is from the
president's speech at a special congress of the FLN held in November 1988.)
This
massive deficit generated inflation and tended both to reduce the purchasing
power of people living on fixed incomes and to encourage speculation. As a way
of expressing their discontent, workers slacked on the job, plunging state
businesses, already plagued with external deficits, into a cycle of
underproductivity from which recovery was very difficult. Social stability was
more or less assured, however, by state imports of foodstuffs, some of which
were subsidized. These imports (which accounted for 47 percent of dietary
intake and 36 percent of proteins) made up 17 percent of total imports between
1967 and 1978, and 19 percent between 1979 and 1983. Price supports represented
6 percent of the government budget between 1979 and 1982. Only a huge
petroleum income could permit constantly growing food imports— growing from 731
million dinars in 1967-69 to close to 9 billion in 1980-84. Numerous observers
reflected that Algeria was in the process of literally eating up its petroleum
resources.
Armed with
large financial resources from oil exports, Algeria chose to invest in a vast
industrialization program. The objective was to regain the investment and, in
time, to move away from hydrocarbons as a source of revenue. This objective was
not achieved. First, many industries were established in the absence of
necessary infrastructure such as water, communications, transportation, and
skilled labor. Second, market equilibrium was not respected as
industrialization was realized. Decision-makers, thinking only in terms of
technical networks, ignored the balance between production and consumption, and
political authorities refused to acknowledge—and fueled—inflation by paying
high salaries without respect for monetary constraints. Inflation reduced the
value of salaries but supported the accumulation of vast private fortunes in
business.
The
accumulated deficit of Algerian state businesses, the source of these economic
difficulties, can be explained essentially in political terms. The government
refused to face up to fiscal limitations; it failed to pressure workers
to increase production; and it failed to pressure management to expand markets
and improve product quality. Such confrontational actions might lead, at least
temporarily, to the shutting down of state enterprises. Algeria's
rulers, concerned with their own interests and not with the nation's economy,
sidestepped these difficulties, preferring to finance the deficit and to import
consumer goods, thus wasting the oil wealth for their own political
preservation. This artificial balancing of the books by means of deficit
spending would provoke a disequilibrium on the macroeconomic level which was
acceptable until 1985-86 only because of significant external resources.
Once the
external financial resources were no longer sufficient to hide this
disequilibrium, the model suffered a severe crisis. The fall in the price of
oil, from $30/barrel in 1982 to $12/barrel in 1988, led to a brutal reduction
in state revenues, which were no longer large enough both to service the debt
and to import consumer goods and interme diate materials required by industry.
The popular uprisings of October 1988 were the direct consequence of these
economic disjunctions, which the underprivileged classes suffered in the
extreme.
According
to figures provided by the president during a special congress that
followed the October uprisings, Algeria's external debt reached $1 billion in 1970,
$16 billion in 1980, $13.6 billion in 1986, and $19 billion in 1988. These
figures gave rise to much debate: other sources estimated $29 billion in 1988. The
debate ceased, however, with the publication of new official figures admitting
a $24 billion debt in 1988, with which World Bank figures concur, estimating
$24.8 billion in 1988 (1989-90 report). Furthermore, these same figures
indicate that 71.3 percent of this debt consisted of obligations to
private banks. Service on this debt cost $8.4 billion annually (compared to
annual receipts totaling $10-$12 billion) which led to a deficit in the capital
balance of $2.54 billion. The ratio of debt to exports was 2.832, which meant
that the total amount of the debt equaled three full years of export income.
Upon his
nomination in September 1989, the president provided figures that shed light on
the economic situation in the wake of the horrendous fall in world oil prices. Household
expenditures were down 7.6 percent per inhabitant in 1988, and per
capita income was down 8 per cent, while purchasing power fell 15 percent in
1987 and 1988. The consumer price index for the cumulative years 1985-88 grew
by 46.7 percent, a record level for inflation in Algeria. The other consequence
of the crisis, due both to the fall in world oil prices and the poor return
from state industries, was unemployment. On the heels of the deceleration in
investments begun already in 1979 (—2.5 percent in 1979-82), unemployment began
a steady rise. The number of unemployed grew by 117,000 in 1987 and by
another 112,000 the next year. Unemployment was estimated at 1.2 million in
1989 (22 percent of the active population), with 75 percent of the unemployed
population between eighteen and twenty-six years of age. Furthermore,
Algeria faces a yearly demand for 200,000 new jobs, which the current state of
the economy cannot satisfy. This growth in unemployment, added to the effects
of the deficit, threatened social stability in the late 1980s and continues to
do so in the 1990s.
By giving
rise to an artificially high demand for consumer goods, the budget deficits led
to speculation and penury that aggravated the constraints on imports. The
effects of these deficits became intolerable for those living on fixed incomes
and politically dangerous insofar as they aggravated social tensions. It is in
this context that the government launched the liberalization of industry,
hoping to curb the budget deficit. However, this reform provoked strong
resistance from proponents of a centralized economy, who set themselves
up as defenders of the socialise alternative, In this political climate,
shortly after the riots of October 1988, the government expressed its intention
to modify legislation concerning foreign oil companies so as to encourage joint
ventures that could generate more resources for the state. To assess the extent
of the changes introduced by the state, it is necessary to recapitulate the
petroleum policies of a decade earlier.
A striking
aspect of recent developments in the international oil industry has been the
change in attitude on the part of oil exporters. The most audacious among these
had, in the 1970s, forcefully announced their intention to gain control of the
mechanisms for setting prices, an intent that some thought to extend to all
natural resources that the Third World exported to developed countries. In the
1970s, a nationalist doctrine of natural resources was developed, whose general
principles were spelled out in a speech given by Algerian president Houari
Boumedienne at a UN special session on natural resources. By means of this
doctrine, thenceforth recognized as legal and legitimate by the international
community, exporters of natural resources in the Third World hoped to attain
maximum profits for commodities in order to finance their countries' economic
development.
Until
1985, petroleum-exporting nations (most of them members of OPEC) were able to
exert influence for a rise in the per barrel price of oil. Nonetheless,
interests, even within OPEC, did not always converge. Major exporters that were
politically allied with consumer nations, such as Saudi Arabia and Kuwait,
sought to avoid weakening the world economy with overly high oil prices—all the
more so because these countries, with their sparse populations, did not face
heavy financial requirements for industrialization. In contrast, Iran, Algeria,
Iraq, and a number of other petroleum-exporting countries desired the highest
possible price levels to support their programs of industrial development.
And yet
the world petroleum market has been modified to the extent that legal
possession of oil and gas fields is no longer sufficient to set the price per
barrel on the world market. The factors that removed the autonomy of that
decision have been touched upon in other chapters in this volume and include
the entry into production of nations not affiliated with OPEC and the creation
of the International Energy Agency, a veritable counter-OPEC entity that
developed an effective strategy of reserve building which neutralized upward
trends in price. In just a few years, the legal ownership of oil wells has been
separated from the ability to set the price on the world market. Algeria or
Iran might very well own their petroleum; they might control 51 percent or even
100 percent of the shares of corporations operating in their territory; but
they were no longer capable of significantly influencing prices on the world
market.
In this
new situation, the nationalist doctrine of natural resources became
anachronistic. Even more, it became a handicap if the exporting country did not
have the financial and technical means for prospecting and well production. It
is in this sense that one must understand the declaration made by Sid-Ahmed
Ghozali upon his nomination as prime minister of Algeria in July 1991 stating
his willingness to sell 25 per cent of Hassi-Messaoud field to foreign
companies. This declaration made a big splash in the local press,
because it threw two important symbols into the ring: Hassi-Messaoud and
Sonatrach, Algeria's state oil company. First, Hassi-Messaoud
represented the Algerian state's intention—announced on February 24, 1971, the
date of the nationalization of foreign oil and gas companies—to be the
proprietor of national wealth put into service for development. Second, Ghozali
himself had been the longtime chief executive officer of Sonatrach, the
instrument of nationalization.
Ghozali's
declaration reflected the limits of the nationalist doctrine and, consequently,
Algeria's urgent need for new financial resources to resolve its deep economic,
social, and political crisis. Entirely dependent (98 percent) on its
hydrocarbon exports, Algeria's export revenues currently amount to some $12
billion per year. However, it faces between $7 and $8 billion annual service on
its foreign debt and must import another $7 to $8 billion worth of food
and manufactured goods required by industry. Thus it faces a chronic
trade deficit of $3-$4 billion each year.
The
government estimates that only 10 percent of the Algerian Sahara has
been explored so far and that fifteen wells are drilled per year. Sonatrach,
the state oil company, believes the number could be increased to ninety.
Moreover, the government is opting for a strategy of intensive exploitation of
oil resources that only foreign companies can accomplish. Sonatrach
estimates that the research and development effort will require $5 billion a
year for the next ten years. Putting into production those natural gas fields
that have already been discovered but not yet exploited will also requite $5
billion between now and 1998. Tapping current reserves—estimated at 450 million
metric tons— could cost an additional $5 billion. In total, this, new strategy
of intensive exploitation would require external financing in the realm of $15
billion and could net, in the near term, $6-$7 billion and $50 billion
between now and the year 2000.
The
government needs financial participation by foreign companies in order to raise
the level of petroleum production, but the Petrol Code of 1986 discouraged all
outside investment. Therefore, it was necessary to modify it in order to attract
foreign companies. Point 4 of the preamble to the revised law, passed by the
Parliament in November 1991, states: "The mobilization of our resources
needed to manage the national debt and encourage national investment, as well
as our desire to encourage participation by foreign companies in
improving the recovery rate of reserves currently being exploited, will
eventually lead us to grant to these companies a limited (and always minority)
interest in ongoing produc tion for a given period and according to specific
conditions.
In order
to attract foreign companies, the new law introduces the following
modifications: (1) extension of the regime governing liquid petroleum products
to natural gas; (2) extension of access of foreign companies to newly
discovered, as well as currently producing, fields; (3) modification of
fiscal policy so as to offer more incentives, with possibilities for reduction
of tariffs and taxes on revenue, in order to push the research effort in the
direction of ignored regions; and (4) an international arbitration clause for
the resolution of potential conflicts between Sonatrach and its foreign
partners. Article 65 of the August 1986 law—which did not permit foreign
partners to share in fields discovered before 1986—has been-superseded
by these new amendments.
In 1992
Algeria's minister of energy, Noreddine Ait-Lahoussine, explained these changes
to American oilmen:
A few months ago, what I proposed to our
parliament to denationalize Algeria's gas reserves and to privatize the
mining industry, I did so in the full knowledge that I had 20 years earlier,
with some of my colleagues in government, advocated the very measures that I
was now proposing be overturned. What we did 20 years ago, and what we are
doing today serve the same purpose: that is to create the necessary conditions
so that economic development can flourish for the benefit of the
Algerians. Twenty years ago, the foreign companies had so much control over
Algeria's natural resources that they could suffocate the national interest. Furthermore,
our national company was not experienced enough to play, with no
handicap, in the league of the international companies. So nationalization
seemed the proper course. Now the situation has changed. Algeria has ownership,
and Sonatrach has become a mature player. But we recognize that we lack the
financial means and that we do not have the sort of technical and human
resources required to fulfill our ambition.[1]
These
words from the minister of energy explain why Algeria felt compelled to change.
Sonatrach, the national company, had neither the technical nor the financial
means to put new fields into production, despite the existence of important
proven reserves.
Nonetheless,
Ait-Lahoussine refected the view that he was introducing an entirely new policy
that would be in conflict with the nationalist doctrine of natural resources. Instead,
he attempted to convince the rather skeptical deputies of the national assembly
that it was only a new oil strategy, not a new oil policy. He explained to them
that the objectives of this strategy were basically to relaunch the effort of
exploration and extension of discovered fields and to increase the recovery
rate for existing fields. The current Algerian leaders do not believe that they
are reneging on past commitments but merely adapting to a new situa
tion.
The new
strategy was in fact part of a general policy of economic liberalization in Algeria.
The general policy, however, has faced serious political and social
constraints. The industrial legacy of Algeria's voluntaristic industrialization
policies of the 1970s is continuing to run deficits which burden the state
budget. In the face of a social demand hitherto satisfied by state food
imports, Algeria faces ever greater financial needs. To solve these problems,
Algerian leaders have had to choose between two policies.
The first
policy was to undertake structural reforms of the economic apparatus so as to
make it efficient and capable of generating new wealth. Thus consumer demand
could be satisfied by the surplus value generated by income-bearing companies. These
reforms, however, were not easy to implement because they entailed an
openness to compete in the international market that would result in bankruptcy
of many state companies. No regime could survive the social consequences of
such reforms, nor did the leaders seem aware of the magnitude of the task. Since
1986, successive governments have attempted fruitlessly through a variety of
laws to compel the state companies to become autonomous. "They all failed
because none could apply the logic of a market-driven price system to the state
companies.
The second
policy consisted of retaining current economic structures— along with
business deficits in the public sector and artificial markets— while increasing
oil exports. The government led by Prime Minister Ghozali appeared to be
leaning toward this second policy, which was easier to implement and was the
only one that might succeed in the short term. Presenting his program to
the parliament in July 1991, he declared, "The dimensions of Algeria's
problems can be measured by the immense distance that exists between the
level of our people's consumer demand and their desire to attain modernity and
the level of production resulting from the tragically insufficient mobilization
of material and human resources. Suppressing this demand can only be a
temporary measure. If we wish to speak of a solution, there is no alternative
to raking production and mobilizing our resources. Increasing production,
development, and the mastery of related processes are long term goals, whose
attainment we cannot await for the solution to our problems. As for resources,
by contrast, our country possesses a trump suit that may be decisive. 1 am
speaking of underground resources, specifically of oil and gas."[2]
In his
answers to the duputies questions, Ghozali did not explain the economic
crisis either by the poor performance of state companies or by the post-1985
collapse in world oil prices. His explanation resuscitated the old
late-1970s debate over the possibility of an intensive exploitation of natural
resources. Citing his former boss and political mentor, Belaid Abdesselam, he
explained that the problems were rooted in the dismantling of contracts for the
export of natural gas in 1979-80. This dismantling deprived the country—and
continues to deprive it—of several billion dollars each year.[3]
Dramatic
events in 1992 reinforced the choice to expand petroleum production. President
Chandly Benjedid was dismissed from office, and his successor, Ahmed Boudiaf,
was subsequently assassinated. The new prime minister named in July 1992 to
succeed Ghozali was none other than Belaid Abdesselam, the architect of
Boumedienne's heavy industry policy. Abdesselam had vigorously defended
Algeria's infant industries from what he had perceived to be politically
motivated efforts to sabotage them. He favored joint ventures in the petroleum
sector but generally distrusted economic agents of the former colonial power,
preferring American partners.
It should
be noted, however, that the social compromise of the 1970s could not be fully
reestablished. In those years the regime enjoyed a historic legitimacy which
gave it political authority that was subsequently lost. The heavy industrial
apparatus did not yet exist, much less burden the state's operating budget. Financial
resources gained from oil and gas exports were earmarked for investments
creating new jobs and thus facilitating a consensus among different political
and social forces. Times have changed. Moreover, the Algerian population has
increased by two-thirds, further constraining state finances.
To Ghozali
and his successor, Belaid Abdesselam, the inefficiency of the public sector,
with its low productivity of labor and equipment, was not a problem in and of
itself if the state had the financial means to compensate for it (i.e.,
if the state had the financial resources to neutralize the devaluation of
currency and the resultant loss of buying power). Inefficiency was not a
problem unless the state failed to hide it by means of imports and the
redistribution of wealth. This idea reflects the logic of a "rentier
state" which faces a crisis every time the level of external resources
falls. To survive, the rentier state needs external financial resources to keep
its redistribution mechanisms oiled—mechanisms that constitute the basis of the
social compromise: perks and favors for some, political wages for
others, and subsidies for the whole population to reduce the prices of imported
goods. The social struggles that have shaken Algeria since October 1988 are
caused by a crisis in the rentier state, for such a state is characterized by a
solidarity and an interconnectedness of interests from the summit to the base
of the social pyramid, according to a redistributive logic, even if the
redistribution is non-egalitarian.
I borrow
the concept of rentier state from Hazem Beblawi and Guiacomo Luciani, whose
analysis highlights the axiom that energy income is of external origin.[4] Since the energy income does
not result from internal labor, the revenue is, in a sense, artificial. The GNP
of oil-ex porting countries does not correspond to their true development. The
energy income is a transfer of a value created somewhere else. The state's
revenue is primarily derived from rent—the profits of scarce and nonrenewable
natural resources. The state legally owns oil and gas wells and employs a small
labor force to extract and transport hydrocarbons. Societal obedience on the
part of the majority can be secured through political distribution of the
output. The scenario does not carry any innate possibility for
substantive change. As a result of possible malfunctions in distribution, revolts
may arise and lead to a change in regime but would not put an end to the
underlying economy of the rentier state.
I wish to
dwell on this notion of a distributive economy to clarify certain
misunderstandings. The distributive economy is not one in which the state is to
be engaged in policies of supporting impoverished social strata. It is not the
welfare state which corrects inequalities of distribution by creating
protective social nets, such as unemployment benefits, health care, education,
and public transportation. In the distributive economy there is no free
distribution of produce or benefits for indigent individuals. Distribution is
even more unjust than in other systems of production. Such an economy is
characterized by a fundamental lack of correspondence between production and
distribution. Moreover, one should not think that the workers are the
beneficiaries of the distributive economy. In fact, by distributing salaries
that do not correspond to real production and are never devalued by inflation,
the economy at the same time gives rise to enormous private fortunes which do
not correspond to the creation of any new wealth. Bureaucratic mechanisms
permit the emergence of artificial riches. They deregulate the parity of money
and prices (depending on one's access to scarce, subsidized commodities) and
cut off the national economy from dynamic international markets.
Distribution,
in the rentier state, works its way through the economy in the form of deficits
in the state companies: that is, the parceling out of rewards is not directly
connected to production. A company keeps operating not because it is
financially efficient but because it performs a given sociopolitical role. It
pays wages not because they are the monetary counterpart of new production but
because they buy employees imported food products, some of which are subsidized
and consequently would affect social instability. But the rentier state cannot
be extinguished at the expense of those dependent on it. The economic
reforms cannot succeed unless they create new jobs to keep employment at a
socially and politically acceptable level. Economic reforms have failed
thus far because those in charge of them have not been able to offer a credible
alternative to the rentier state, particularly for the social groups that would
have suffered the most. Absorbing the state companies' deficit is equivalent to
lowering the level of employment and reducing consumer demand as advised by the
IMF. However, reducing consumer demand in an underdeveloped country may result
in starving whole categories of the population that are economically
disadvantaged, This solution, moreover, carries with it the risks of political
instability and anarchy. In Algeria, such a policy would benefit the islamic
Salvation Front (FIS), which could take power via the streets.
The
availability of financial wealth from oil exports allows the social and
political contradictions of the current system to be ignored. It makes
contradictions bearable and even hides them. This raises the question whether
energy rent is really capable of generating and promoting economic development
and whether it is an advantage or a handicap. The question is worth asking if
one compares Southeast Asian economies such as South Korea and Taiwan with
oil-exporting countries such as Libya, Mexico, Iraq, and Algeria. In the second
group, energy income has perverted and blocked development, because it did not
have a true economic function. Energy rent is not used as an exchange value,
integrated into the world economic system. It has been used as a usage value, a
social wealth destroyed through consumption. Its political function prevented
it from being converted to productive capital financing enterprises capable of
competing, internationally.
Algeria
dramatically illustrates the perversion of economic development by
energy income. Since its independence in 1962, it has reaffirmed its intention
to apply its natural resources to development. Algeria did not use its
oil revenues to import luxury products or to acquire military equipment beyond
its defense needs. The bulk of the energy income was used to establish an
industrial infrastructure which, unexpectedly, relied heavily on state
subsidies. The social and political status quo depends on the balance between
the state companies' deficits and the energy income. The model failed as soon
as the energy income did not cover these deficits and their effects. Since its
inception, industry in Algeria has generated an artificial consumer
demand; artificial in that it did not have a value counterpart in production. Until
the mid-1980s, this consumer demand was met with huge imports financed with the
oil money. As world oil prices dropped in 1985-86 though, Algeria found itself
unable to meet consumer demand.
As long as
energy income is available, the temptation not to confront the implacable
forces of the market, of production, and of competition will be great. The
rentier state will wither only with the extinction of the energy income that
supports it. In the economic realm, the subsidies made possible by energy
income prevent the operation of market laws. In the political realm, this
income obstructs democratization and the viability of political alternatives by
making the population dependent on the rulers. And oil strategies, old and new,
have been and will continue to be exclusively concerned with adjusting the
state's financial requirements to the legal means of exploiting petroleum
products. In the past, it was necessary to adjust in conflict with foreign
companies; to day it is necessary to adjust in concert with them.
Notes
[1] Petroleum Intelligence Weekly (March 9,1992)
[2] Programme de Gouvernement (in French), Services du Chef du Gouvernement Algiers (July 1991), 25-26.
[3] Ibid. [Editors' note: The source was Belaid Abdesselam, Le gaz algérien: stratégies et enjeux (Algiers, 1990).]
[4] H. Beblawi and G. Luciani, The
Rentier State (London: Groom Helm, 1987).