Foreign companies wishing to take part in Algeria's next oil and gas exploration licensing round must offer access to reserves and technology to qualify, Energy and Mines Minister Chakib Khelil said.

The stipulation about reserves, a novel requirement for firms competing in an exploration tender in Algeria, is in line with the Opec member country's ambition to boost its growing international upstream role.

'The conditions won't be the same as in the past,' Khelil told a seminar on energy policy in Algiers.

'We will favour partners who will give us, in return, access to reserves, but also, as well, access to technology.

'The companies that fulfil this condition will be qualified.

“In fact we are going to use this international bid to boost Sonatrach's presence abroad,' he added in reference to Algeria's state-owned energy conglomerate.

A date for the next round is keenly sought by multinationals preparing to compete for permits to explore for oil and gas in Algeria, among the world's top 20 largest oil reserves owners.

Algeria wants foreign investment to help Sonatrach, Africa's biggest company by revenue, raise the north African country's oil output to two million barrels per day (bpd) by 2010 from about 1.4 million bpd now.

Khelil said the tender 'is currently in preparation”.    

Sonatrach, a major gas exporter to Europe, has been busily expanding abroad. Khelil told Paris-based industry magazine Petrole et Gaz Arabes in July that Sonatrach sought strategic partnerships that gave it access to international reserves.

Sonatrach agreed a partnership with Energias de Portugal earlier in 2007 and took a stake in the company.

Norway's Statoil was working with Sonatrach in Algeria and had made it an exploration partner in Egypt, he said.

In February, Sonatrach won a four-year permit to explore for oil in Mali.

The firm also has exploration acreage in Libya.

In a move seen by many analysts as Sonatrach's preferred  future investment model, Sonatrach and Gazprom, holder of the world's largest gas reserves, reached agreement in 2006 on co-operation in the liquefied natural gas business, 'upstream' asset swaps, and joint bidding for assets in third countries.

Russia said in January 2007 that Sonatrach was preparing to participate in four gas exploration deals in Russia under the cooperation accord.

Algeria's oil reserves of 12.3 billion barrels, according to the BP Statistical Review, should last for more than 20 years and its gas reserves of around 159 trillion cubic feet will last around 50 years at current production rates.

Some 40 international oil firms already have acreage in Algeria, according to Wood Mackenzie.