Africa’s top gas exporter Algeria on Tuesday spoke out against a European Union price cap on natural gas, saying it would threaten upstream investments.<\/p>\n
Algeria “doesn’t support the idea of limiting prices”, Energy Minister Mohamed Arkab said, speaking a day after EU energy ministers agreed a temporary ceiling to mitigate a severe energy crunch following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.<\/p>\n
“Energy markets must stay free so upstream” investments can continue, he told a press conference, according to the official APS news agency.<\/p>\n
“Algeria is seen as a reliable and secure supplier to Europe and we are in full agreement with our European partners on long-term pricing,” he added.<\/p>\n
The EU price cap, agreed Monday after months of negotiations, will apply from February 15 and run for a year.<\/p>\n
EU countries are worried that they will have a hard time filling gas storage tanks in time for next winter.<\/p>\n
The ceiling will be triggered if the European benchmark price for natural gas futures goes above 180 euros (around $190) per megawatt hour for three consecutive days.<\/p>\n
Russia, which used to be the top exporter of gas to the EU, has turned off the taps in retaliation for a series of crippling sanctions against it designed to deplete its income used for its war.<\/p>\n
The Kremlin has also bitterly criticised the mechanism.<\/p>\n
Before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Algeria supplied around 11 percent of the gas consumed in Europe.<\/p>\n
A steady stream of European officials have visited Algeria in recent months to seek supply deals to help reduce dependence on Russia.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Africa’s top gas exporter Algeria on Tuesday spoke out against a European Union price cap on natural gas, saying it would threaten upstream investments. Algeria “doesn’t support the idea of limiting prices”, Energy Minister Mohamed Arkab said, speaking a day after EU energy ministers agreed a temporary ceiling to mitigate a severe energy crunch following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. “Energy markets must stay free so upstream” investments can continue, he told a press conference, according to the official APS news agency. “Algeria is seen as a reliable and secure supplier to Europe and we are in full agreement with our […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[133],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-544400","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-oil-gas"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/544400","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=544400"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/544400\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=544400"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=544400"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=544400"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}