The unfolding crisis in Ukraine is leaving Algeria caught between loyalty to its traditional, but weakened Kremlin ally, and fostering fresh relations and gas deals with estranged European nations, analysts say.
The third day into the Ukraine crisis saw CEO of Algeria’s state-owned oil and gas company Sonatrach give an interview affirming Algeria’s “willing to support its long-term partners in case of difficult situations.” He said his company eyes transporting gas via the Transmed pipeline linking Algeria to Italy, to counterbalance shortages of Russian gas that has up to this point covered 40 percent of Europe’s energy demands.
Plans are already underway to discuss gas exports to Italy.
Riccardo Fabiani, project director of North Africa at International Crisis Group said in an interview with Hespress EN that the move is partially driven by an understanding that Russia’s policy in the UN Secuirty Council has steered away from aligning with Algeria and moved towards a neutrality that can sustain relations with other North African partners, particularly Morocco.
“It seems clear that the Algerians will try to increase as much as they can gas supply to leverage this in their dispute with Morocco. They want to reinforce their influence over Europe so that Europe can become more sensitive and sympathetic to Algerian positions.”
After Norway, Algeria may find itself as the second-largest exporter of gas to Europe in the event of a Russian cutoff. The US is already shipping record volumes, Qatar would need approval from Asian consumers to ship to Europe, Libya is still in the midst of internal conflicts that hamper gas export capacities.
But to stand by such a pledge may prove difficult to achieve, said an expert on strategic studies who spoke under the condition of anonymity because he was not allowed to speak publicly.
Stagnation in gas production, growing domestic consumption, and spare capacity to export gas are detrimental to Algeria’s ability to scale up exports to Europe. On the one hand, the Maghreb-Europe pipeline would need to be reopened if Algeria were to meet European demands. On the other, Algeria would actually need to begin off-shore exploration – a promise it made in 2015 – and has not yet met.
Even in the event of Algeria meeting its promise to Europe without jeapordizing Russian-Algerian relations,the North African country will nonetheless feel the impacts of sanctions
“Algeria imports most if not all of its arms from Russia. Besides the reputational damage that a country may incurr for doing business with state-owned Russian firms, the sanctions will make it hard for Algeria to continue building its arsenal. Maintenance of Russian equipment used by Algeria will be difficult to conduct following the recent development in Ukraine,” said the analysit.
“Any weakenjng of Algeria’s armamanent suppliers is a victory for Morocco,” he said.
It has become obvious that no one can trust or believe Algerians. They are with you when they need your support and then side against you after using you and getting what they needed from you.
Putin is a pure criminal and mobs godfather. he will never forget Algerians allied with his enemies when he needed their support. And comes a day he would make them pay for that.
Moroccans have to be thankful to god for enabling us to know what type of neighbor we have. The neighbor that is always zooming their cameras on you, watching what you are doing and doing their best to stop you. Just because they cannot think out of the box to do like Morocco without gas and other natural resources they have, makes of us their pure enemy. We can see what type of brain they have. And last word: believe or not, Algerians here in US are not much different from those in Algeria. Well, to be fair, let’s say more than 95% of them.