[NEWS] Algeria Incorporated begins to take action

Algerian Prime Minister Ouyahia had been enjoying his control over the country's military affairs and its $12 billion yearly budget to acquire new equipment and use said equipment in wars against regional terrorists, and President Zidane had been enjoying his relatively free reign over the $37 billion of the country's budget that could easily be shifted around to infrastructure projects.

"But there is no reason for us to limit ourselves at those numbers!" Zidane cheerfully explained to his ruling counterpart. "Algeria, after all, is more of a corporation than a country - an oil and gas exporting company. If we learn to better manage Algeria as a company, we can massively increase our profits."

It went without saying that Algeria was a unique country in that it simultaneously was the #4 natural gas exporter in the world while simultaneously containing the world's #3 largest shale gas reserves, leaving them theoretically unopposed by anyone, and friendly with other gas-drenched countries like Russia.

The men set a rough target of 200 billion cubic meters of gas per year, to be exported as LNG.

That implies a significant upgrade to liquefaction infrastructure at Skikda, whose current capacity is 64 billion cubic meters per year. Based on an average cost per ton of LNG of 10 liquefaction plants worldwide, the estimated cost of the liquefaction capacity necessary is $97.14 billion. Zidane estimated that this could be paid for over the course of five years.

To build the actual shale gas wells it would cost approximately $1.56 billion in total, which will begin immediately and which will begin to extract gas in 2026, when the LNG upgrades at Skikda have finished.