The story of Tunisia’s upstream in 2020 was marked by Covid-19, forced protest-led shutdowns at key fields and instability at the energy ministry. The result: a 7% drop in crude output to just 32,000 b/d – the lowest level since Tunisia’s first year of production in 1966 (see chart 2).
For a blow-by-blow account, see the energy ministry’s freshly released 2020 activity report where almost a page has been dedicated to production outages. But it’s not as if Tunisia’s upstream was in tip-top shape before 2020 (MEES, 10 April 2020). If anything, last year represented the culmination of a decade of underinvestment, natural decline and political inaction. (CONTINUED - 799 WORDS)
