ALGIERS�The general manager of the Algerian state oil and gas company Sonatrach, Abdelhak Bouhafs, and the president of South Africa's Central Energy Fund, Renosi Mokate, signed an energy cooperation agreement.
They will seek to develop energy partnership opportunities identified by Sonatrach and the South African oil firms Mossgas and Soekor during three energy workshops here this week.
Those workshops focused on hydrocarbon exploration, production, transportation, and marketing, as well as petrochemicals and oil refining, in the two countries and others on the African continent.
The firms also discussed the possibility of building a 900-km gas pipeline between Kydu in Mozambique, and Cape Town, South Africa.
In that connection, Sonatrach and its South African partners are considering establishing of a joint company to work in Gabon, Chad, Angola, and Iraq. Another firm would market hydrocarbon products in South Africa.
According to Bouhafs, such joint companies would be "the starting point of strategic cooperation between Algeria and South Africa," which would be based on the energy sector.