Sighting of evidence of Oil in Tunisia / Algeria
Algeria 20 Feb 1979 to 9 Mar 1979
25 February 1979
27°42'46.994" N 9°9'19.396" E
Driving South West in Southern Tunisia, close to the Libyan border, we came across an oil rig nestling amongst the sand dunes.
Coming across this photos of the oil rig and storage tanks led me into researching their possible locations and tracking the route as far as I could remember it on Google and Bing Maps. The fixed points I had were the amphitheatre at El Jem, Tunisia and the prehistoric cave painting at DJanet, Algeria. Also known as Tassili n'Ajjer. A distance of over 800 m or 1300 Km. About four days traveling in our Bedford 4x4 on the predomiently dirt and sand roads.
However, locating the underground homes in Matmata, Tunisia cut the search down to about 700 m or 1100 Km.
All wrong apparenly. It was unlikly that we managed to get this far into the Al-Burmah Oil field in Southern Tunisia. See here for that story.
Oil was found in Southern Tunisia in 1964 and the Al-Burmah Oil field sperads across into the adjacent Algeria. These photos are perhaps closer to In Amenas in Algeria than to Tataouine in Tunisia.
Research led to this site about Berkine Basin oil field, including a map. Another site with a map at the end of the article. Al-Burmah oil field is also know as El Borma. El Borma is located amidst the vast sand dunes of the Grand Erg Oriental in eastern Algeria. Another oil field map.
To see the photos of this article in HD follow this link to my photo gallery site. Click here.
Map of North Africa with approximate route zoomed in to the location of the oil storage tanks.
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