12-08-09 Vietnam and Algeria have bolstered their cooperation in the field of energy through a partnership agreement signed between Vietnam's PetroVietnam and Algeria's Sonatrach.
This is the culmination of a project on oil exploration and exploitation that PetroVietnam began in Algeria 6 years ago.

Under the new agreement, Sonatrach, PetroVietnam and Thailand's Oil Power have officially established a consortium called the Bir Seba Group to manage and exploit oil fields in the Sahara Desert region of Southern Algeria.
The partners will begin a period of building infrastructure, hiring personnel and carefully calculating production capacity to ensure the success of the group's operations. The Bir Seba Group is scheduled to start pumping oil at the end of 2011.