ABSTRACT
The past decade can generally be characterized as a period of declining optimism in the prospects for increased energy output from Algeria, Libya and Egypt, North Africa’s main hydrocarbon producing countries. It is arguably no accident that the failure of the attempts to revive the oil and gas sectors in Libya and Algeria in particular, and to create a new era of exploration in Egypt can be directly attributed to the parallel failures of attempts to prolong and to introduce generational change within the ruling elites. This attempt in Libya came to a violent conclusion in February 2011 with the “Arab Spring” uprising against the regime of Colonel Muammar Qadhafi and eight months of civil war resulting in the downfall of the regime. The transition to a replacement system has become deadlocked in faction fighting. In Algeria, the situation is considerably more complex, with the question of where power may lie in the future still apparently unresolved, but revolution remains one of the least likely scenarios. The major question, then, is whether the politics of North Africa over the next period will provide anything like the conditions necessary to make a new and perhaps more reasonable and more commercial attempt to allow new exploration and production of oil and gas. The signs from the current political changes are far from promising.
