Algeria hostage crisis puts spotlight on oil installation security

By Margaret McQuaile and Robert Perkins in London

January 21, 2013 - The bloody hostage crisis in Algeria, which ended late on January 19th when Algerian special forces launched a final assault on the compound, has exposed the vulnerability of oil and gas installations to jihadist attack as instability increases across the Middle East and North Africa.

Algerian oil minister Youcef Yousfi, speaking after touring the Amenas gas plant site, said that security around Algeria's energy installations would be bolstered in the wake of the armed attack, in which officials in Algeria say more than 30 hostages were killed.

"We are going to reinforce security around energy installations by relying on our own resources," he said. "There is no question of accepting external security forces to take charge of security at our energy installations."

"Algeria has the necessary means to guarantee the security of its energy installations," he added.

The In Amenas gas plant did not suffer any serious damage as a result of the armed siege by Islamic militants and staff have returned to the complex with operations set to restart in the next few days, Yousfi said.

Neighboring Libya has beefed up security around its oil and gas installations in the western and southern areas bordering Algeria in response to the attack in Algeria.

A statement posted on the Libyan defense ministry's website says that "due to current events in the region the Oil Installations Guards have taken a series of actions to protect oil fields and oil sites in western and southern Libya in addition [setting up] to a special operations room.

The statement said that the oil protection force had also "increased the number of guards and protection and supplied them with all the necessary equipment and materials required to defend oil fields and sites while boosting security patrols outside and inside the installations around the clock to defend against any attempt to harm public property."

There have been no reports of any incursions into the oil fields, which are well protected, and production continues normally, according to the Libyan statement.

The storming of In Amenas has been ostensibly linked to the French military offensive against jihadist fighters in Mali, which borders Algeria to the south.

The collapse of the Libyan regime of Moammar Qadhafi has been blamed for the flow of heavy guns into northern Mali after troops that fought alongside Qadhafi loyalists in last year's rebellion returned to their country and joined an Islamist rebellion.

Former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan told the BBC on January 18 that Mali had become "collateral damage of Libya" after the civil war there ended in October last year.

Richard Cochrane, Middle East and North Africa analyst at IHS, said the attack on In Amenas would confirm many of Algeria’s fears about resurgent Islamist militancy as a result of greater regional insecurity, particularly in Mali, "itself a direct result of the disintegration of Libyan state control over its territory, stemming from the 2011 conflict." The attack elevated the already high security risks stemming from wider regional instability, he said.

Cochrane said it was unlikely that the attack was a direct response to the French intervention in Mali given the level of planning that would have been involved to penetrate so deep into Algerian territory without detection, although the current crisis in Mali had allowed numerous jihadist groups a safe haven to recruit, resupply and plan for such missions.

But the military intervention in Mali risks displacing more jihadists, many of whom are likely to look to the Maghreb, and southern Libya in particular, for refuge, Cochrane said, warning that this migration would heighten the risk of attack against Western assets and personnel across the region.

The immediate response of some of the oil companies in Algeria to the terrorist incident, which began on January 16, when the Algerian military responded with deadly force, has been to pull ex-patriate staff out of the country.

BP and Norway's Statoil, which jointly operate both the In Amenas gas plant and the In Salah gas fields to the west with Algerian state-owned oil and gas company Sonatrach, said they were removing personnel from the country as a precautionary move.

BP said January 18 that hundreds of oil company workers, including 11 of its own staff, had been evacuated from Algeria two days earlier and that further flights were being planned and arranged as necessary.

The oil major has said that gas production from its In Salah gas site in the Sahara desert has not been affected by the incident but that security has been stepped up at the site.

A spokesman for the company declined to give further details of operations at In Salah, where gas production matches the 9 billion cu m/year normally produced at In Amenas to the east.

Jointly, the two fields produce some 18 Bcm/year of gas -- about 23% of the country's annual total of some 78 Bcm.