The Pipeline Transport Institute has completed field activities for inspection of the lightning protection and earthing system at the Béjaïa (Béjaïa, Algeria) regional logistic centre’s loading terminal’s hydrocarbon storage farm of Sonatrach.

The activities were conducted during February 2019 by employees of The Pipeline Transport Institute’s centre for construction technology and building and structure inspection, as well as specialists of electrotechnical laboratory of The Pipeline Transport Institute’s Scientific and Engineering Centre, in accordance with the contract between The Pipeline Transport Institute and Sonatrach, an Algerian state oil and gas company.

According to the results of the inspection, a technical report with recommendations on elimination of the detected defects and improvement of the existing lightning protection and earthing systems will be developed.

Sonatrach is an Algerian state oil and gas company. It is the biggest company of the African continent in terms of economic performance (across all industries). Sonatrach is engaged in oil and gas production, refining, sale and transportation, also investing in power engineering.

The cooperation memorandum between Transneft and Sonatrach was signed in October 2017 during the meeting of the Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev and the Prime Minister of Algeria Ahmed Ouyahia.