Word: hassi
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Dates: during 1957-1957
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Three huge derricks have gone up on a 17-square-mile triangle at Hassi Messaoud, and high-grade oil has been penetrated in a 450-ft.-thick layer at 12,500 ft. Estimated capacity of the field: 300 million tons (15 times France's yearly petrol consumption). It is planned to have 20 wells operating by the end of 1958. The excitement of bringing in the big "bear cats" does not disturb the calm of the bespectacled chief engineer, Christian Redron, who wears nothing but khaki shorts and sandals on a skinny frame burned to leather...
...gang of wildcatters toiling after oil in the broiling Sahara sun found themselves regarded last week as France's best hope of the future. Their latest dramatic find, tapped and capped at Hassi Messaoud, in the southeastern quarter of war-torn Algeria, skyrocketed shares of the Compagnie Française des Pétroles from 34,000 francs last year to 61,000 francs two weeks ago. From Hassi Messaoud and neighboring Algerian fields recently opened, there was now the promise of an assured yield of 60 million bbl. of oil a year. (Controlled 1956 production by U.S. wells...
None was more aware of this than the derrick monkeys, roughnecks, rock hounds and pebble puppies sweating in the 130° heat at Hassi Messaoud. Not for pay alone, which averages $400 a month, but from a patriotic spirit of excitement, the 83 Frenchmen (average age, 25) faced the needling, bone-dry winds and the oven-hot, reddish-yellow sand of the vast desert. Working peacefully shoulder to shoulder with them were 134 Algerian Berbers...
Mountaintop Threats. The bare-bosomed Blue Bell girls are safe from the sunburn of the Sahara this year: getting the oil from Hassi Messaoud through the rebel country to the Mediterranean seaboard is practically impossible. In the desert, where no man can hide from the hovering helicopter, there is no trouble from the rebel fellagha, but the wild Atlas Mountains, which bar all routes northward from the oilfield, shelter some of the toughest Moslem rebel gangs. On the final 150-mile stretch of the railroad from Oran there have been continuous attacks by rebels for a year. In one night...
...only the oil at Hassi Messaoud is stalled, but that of the recently discovered rich Hassi R'Mel field (estimated reserves 700 million bbl.), only 280 miles from Algiers, and the 20 boreholes in the Edjelé field (capacity 700 million bbl.), where the oil is only 1,350 ft. underground. The same applies to the huge natural-gas reservoir at Djebel Berga (2,000,000 cu. ft. a day) and vast storehouses of industrial metals in other areas of the Sahara (TIME, July 1). Plans for railroads and pipelines tapping these resources and bringing them...