Statoil Hopes Algeria Amenas Gas Plant at Full Capacity

Algeria's In Amenas gas plant should be back to full output capacity soon when partners complete work on a third processing train, a senior official at Norwegian oil company Statoil said on Tuesday.

Amenas, which once accounted for 11.5 percent of the OPEC state's gas production, has been working less than full capacity since the January 2013 militant attack and siege in the Sahara desert where 40 oil workers were killed.

The third processing train is still offline, but increasing production would be free more gas for Algerian exports. Current Amenas production is at 17 million cubic meters per day, according to Algerian officials.

"We are working hard with our partners to make it possible for the third train to resume as soon as possible," Statoil chief for North Africa Bjorn Kare Viken told Reuters on the sidelines of a oil conference in Oran.

Statoil operates jointly with BP and Algeria's Sonatrach.

Algeria has struggled to bring in foreign oil investors in recent bidding rounds to help bolster new energy production. The government said it expects a 4.1 percent increase in output this year, through increasing yields at already operating fields.

(Reporting by Hamid Ould Ahmed; writing by Patrick Markey)