ORAN, ALGERIA—The new oil price level is an opportunity for oil and gas producers in North Africa to adjust their business models and rethink future strategies, according to panelists at the North Africa Petroleum Exhibition and Conference (NAPEC 2017) in Algeria.

The conference highlighted the role of technology as a game-changer in terms of increasing efficiency and reshaping the industry as well as regional investment opportunities and incentives offered by the local government to woo international oil and gas companies to develop hydrocarbon reserves.

“We are working on making foreign investments in the oil and gas industry in Algeria attractive again, and currently we are working on preparing the next bid round,” Sid-Ali Betata, head of Algeria’s National Agency for the Development of Hydrocarbon Resources (Al-Naft), said during his keynote speech March 23 at NAPEC.

“We are looking for a win-win partnership and we are ready to make this a reality,” said Betata, who was fired early this week along with Sonatrach CEO Amine Mazouzi, who was replaced by Abdelmoumen Ould Kaddour.

Ahmed Fettouhi, vice president of downstream activities at Sonatrach, highlighted the E&P progress the state-owned company has made over the last few years. Among the company’s accomplishments was achieving a record level of oil production in October 2016 at 200 tonnes of oil equivalent (toe).

“We intend to increase this capacity by more than 7 MMtoe per year not only through recovery efforts on existing fields such as Hassi Messaoud, El Merck and MLE, but also by the commissioning of several new fields such as Touat gas,” he said.

Sonatrach also aims to invest US$50 billion over the next five years to boost its production capacity, Fettouh said.

“To achieve this objective, we are planning to drill 1,300 rigs to produce 230 MMtoe from [the] current 200 toe,” he said, adding the company will also focus on renewable energy—including solar energy—as part of its diversification plan.

Chris Ward, president of the European Association of Geoscientists Engineers and director of geoscience and petroleum engineering, North Sea, for Baker Hughes, said low oil prices have led to declining costs. “Some is structural, driven by improving efficiencies, some is pricing pressure on the service companies, some hopefully will be driven by new technologies,” he said.

Historically, technology has driven efficiency, lowered cost per barrel, made new reserves accessible and increased recovery, Ward said. “The last long period of low [oil and gas] prices (mid-80s to late 00s) drove rapid technology change–3-D seismic, extended reach, horizontals, multilaterals, underbalanced drilling.”

Allen Sanders, president of Anadarko Algeria Co., reviewed Anadarko’s projects in Algeria and the overall business environment of the country. It’s a “complex and challenging environment, but investment opportunities can be beneficial for both foreign investors and Algeria,” he said.

Meanwhile, Jalel Smaoui, head of international operations at Tunisia’s national oil company Entreprise Tunisienne d’Activités Pétrolières (ETAP) spoke about E&P activity in the country. Its oil and gas production is falling. “In Tunisia, there is a decline in production from primary energy resources by about 6% per year over the period 2010 to 2016, accompanied by an increase of the Algerian gas royalty in 2016 vs. 2014-2015,” Smaoui said.

Fewer development wells implies less production, Smaoui added; “however, a good recovery of the development activity is expected from 2017.”

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