The success of shale gas production in the US is encouraging others to catch up with this revolution and bring additional gas resources into a world becoming more aware of the advantages of gas environmentally and economically.

But it is not always easy to copy the example of one country to another because factors may be different and prohibiting. One recent example is Algeria’s desire to develop its enormous shale gas resources.

The country’s conventional gas industry has been a developed one since 1956 and was among the first to liquefy gas and export it. It also used a number of pipelines to export to Europe as well. Algeria’s proven reserves stand at 4.5 trillion cubic meters (tcm) but have remained stagnant since 2003 due to a lack of additional exploration and development.

Algerian production, excluding injected and flared gas, has fallen from a peak of 88.2 billion cubic meters a year (bcm) in 2005 to 78.6 bcm in 2013 for the same reasons. Just to be clear, Algeria produces much more gas than the above numbers, but due to the nature of its condensate and crude oilfields, it needs to recycle more than half the gas it produces back to the reservoirs. MORE