The Oil and Gas Industry in Algeria is Examining Security By: Nina Bharadwaj

     The bloodshed and fighting In Amenas has left the oil and gas industry wondering what all of the fighting might mean for future investments in certain countries.
     BP's company had 18 workers at the Sahara gas plant. The chief executive, Bob Dudley, said that he is "reviewing security" at other gas plants in the region and also around the world.
     This terrible attack has been the worst attack in living memories, except for the industry's appearance in many inconstant regions. Bob Dudley said the BP has "never experienced an attack on this scale before." Many people say that the oil and gas industry will improve their security. They may also re-examine many business interests in regions that have been automatically called politically risky. It is said that security is a large primacy in countries like Iraq and Nigeria. This is because workers at gas plants have been kidnapped from these countries. The view of hazard for workers of the gas and oil industry has increased, extremely. It is expected that many countries may stop investing in the In Amenas if the amount of attacks increase.
     The head of Jardine Lloyd Thompson's credit, political and security hazard company, Nick Robinson, said "The main issue to assess is whether the Algerian event represents a new ongoing threat and a general associated elevation in the risk environment or a one-off occurrence which may now result actually in tighter security in the region." During the civil war in the 1990's, there were no important attacks on any of the oil and gas industry facilities.
     Algeria is a big producer of gas and supplies gas to southern Europe. Due to this, Algeria has been pleased to be getting investments from a large amount of companies like BP, Statoil, and Repsol, even though there has been a large inflicting tax environment.
     Geoff Porter, of North Africa Risk Consulting, said "From 2006, after the government reversed the hydrocarbons reform law of 2005, the hurdle had become the regulatory environment... Now, all of a sudden, security has returned as a concern."
     Around the world, demand for the use of individual security and hazardous management is evaluated to rise.
     Bob Dudley says that BP has assured Stirling Group, which is a security firm. This is to furnish relation within the Algerian military, police and the community, even though because of the Algerian law, individual security firms are not granted to work at such facilities.
     Other places, where individual security is allowed, many companies like Control Risks and G4S provide physical safeguard for oil and gas facilities as well as risk analysis.
     Neither of any of the many security companies, that were contacted by the Financial Times, were prepared to speak about the impact of the Algerian attack. Even before last week, the amount to spend on protection and security was supposed to rise. A report from Frost & Sullivan that was published earlier this month said that the security of important facilities was the primacy for oil and gas industries around the world. Since there has been an increase in the demand of energy, the building of new places, and physical and cyber threats to these places have caused growth in the oil and gas infrastructure market. The report said that the oil and gas market should increase from $18.31 bn in 2011 to over $31 bn in 2021.
     The hazard of more kidnappings for money insurance or terrorism insurance will be examined across the north Africa region in light of the attacks, said Mr. Robson. He thinks that the result will be that the risk environment has "elevated generally" even though this has happened a while ago since "the weapons and rebels left Libya last year."
     The bloody kidnapping In Amenas gas plant has destroyed the bubble of security that surrounded the gas plant in Algeria. It has also increased the hazardous profile across the region, which has compounded "a wider mood of instability across the Saharan region," an associate fellow on the Middle East and north Africa program at Chatham House, John Marks.
Analysis: The author of this article, Sylvia Pfeifer, wrote this article to tell us about how the attack on the oil and gas industry has affected Algeria. She also wrote this to tell us about what will be done in the future to prevent attacks from happening.  The main ideas of this article are that Algeria's attack has caused oil and industry's to question investing in risky countries, and that the oil and gas industry is planning on increasing the security and examining business interests in certain regions. There was no sense of bias in this article. There were just facts and quotes.
I think it is terrible that this attack happened in Algeria. I also feel bad that countries may stop investing in Algeria and many other countries because of the attacks. This could cause an economic crisis in these countries. I am happy that this industry will increase the amount of security though because maybe this will stop attacks and countries can continue to invest in these risky countries. I just hope that there are no more attacks in these countries and that increasing the amount of security works.
Source: http://edition.cnn.com/2013/01/20/business/algeria-security-review-oil/index.html?hpt=iaf_c2