Algeria Thwarts Total’s Anadarko Deal

Algerian authorities’ decision to prevent the French energy giant “Total” to buy the assets of the American giant “Anadarko”, in Algeria, which appears an economic phenomenon, but the deal’s background remains political and has to do with the country’s situation and popular demonstrations.

Days after the French company announced its acquisition of the assets of the American company in Algeria, the Energy Minister, Mohamed Arguab said that the Algerian authorities would prevent the transfer of Anadarko’s investments to Total with a “right of first refusal” which would allow it to stand in the way of any deal that is subject to Algerian law.

Algeria has already intervened successfully to prevent such deals. Perhaps the most important example of this was the Egyptian branch of Orascom Telecom in Algeria, Djezzy, that was owned by the Egyptian businessman Naguib Sawiris.

Previously, the Energy Minister has confirmed that his country will prevent the company “Total” to acquire the assets of “Anadarko Petroleum” in Algeria, in a decision that surprised many observers, because everyone was convinced at one point that the deal was completed, as the assets of Anadarko in Algeria reach over 260.000 barrels per day, which is more than 25% of the country’s production of crude oil that is estimated at one million barrels per day.

“The Algerian authorities discussed with Anadarko about clarification on this information, but we have not received a response so far”, which means for him that “There is no contract between Total and Anadarko. We have good relations with Anadarko and we will do our best to preserve Algeria’s interests including the right of preemption to block the sale.”

Occidental Petroleum has agreed to sell the Anadarko assets in Algeria, Ghana, Mozambique, and South Africa to Total for $ 8.8 billion if the US oil company succeeds in its plan to acquire Anadarko.

Some of the readings went to explain that the French giant’s eagerness to buy the assets of Anadarko in Algeria is a challenge to the Algerian authorities and to the growing popular disapproval of the growing influence of France in the country, which grew alarmingly under the former President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, giving the impression that Algeria turned into a French protectorate and an African banana state.

The move by the Department of Energy to cancel this controversial deal came after the issue took a bit of debate on the level of the social network “Facebook”, where activists expressed astonishment and surprised by the deal, while the growing feeling of Algerians hostility to the former colony, according to official reports, involved in straining the atmosphere and weaving conspiracies against the army establishment and trying to ignite fire between it and the popular movement and work to block efforts to reach a solution to the current crisis.

The army leadership, represented by the Deputy Minister of Defense and the Chief of Staff, Major General, Ahmed Gaid Salah, attacked France directly by calling it the “former colony” and warned its “insiders” at home to engage in its subversive projects,

A strong statement that stopped the French interference in the internal affairs of the country, so that no official position was issued from Paris, on the crisis that the country is experiencing since the sixth of last March, except data confirming self-exclusion on the internal affairs of Algeria, as stated by the Ambassador Xavier Driancourt, in a press statement after handing over his credentials.