Freezing of funds of the Italian company SAIPEM

Algiers- The amount of contracts won by the Italian company SAIPEM exceeds 6 million Euros and this in just six months during the year 2008.

• In this context, the company has managed to pass two contracts with Sonatrach worth 1.8 billion Euros, in less than a week, and picks up all of Sonatrach oil contracts during the last months of 2008. The latest was the contract for the construction of production facilities and gas processing, after that of November 5, worth 1.5 billion Euros, to link the fields of Hassi R'mel to the petrochemical group in Arzew.
  
  
• Furthermore, Saipem has won in late July 2008, the contract of the year, worth 4.5 billion dollars for the project to develop a carrier of liquefied natural gas with a capacity of 4.7 million tons/ year in Arzew. The contract was granted in unusual circumstances as it had previously been assigned to the British group PETROFAC before being assigned to the Italo-Japanese group. The justifications, then, by Sonatrach about this change were not convincing at all after the first company tried to protest. And before these projects announced in last three months of 2008, "Saipem" won other contracts with Sonatrach, in which the Italian group was responsible for the construction of two pipe-lines Med-gas and Galsi.
  
  Saipem and the Egyptian Petrojet, have signed with Sonatrach on Wednesday 03 June 2009, at the headquarters of the Directorate General of Sonatrach in Algiers, and in the presence of Chakib Khelil, Minister of Energy and Mines, contracts for the completion of transport system by the natural gas pipeline, "JK 3", a pipeline with a total length of 784 kilometers, linking Hassi R'mel to El Kala, according to an official of the company Sonatrach.
• 
  Ennahar / Dalila B. /Agencies