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3. Abdelkader Chanderli
Abdelkader Chanderli was born in 1915. He studied at the Sorbonne and the Ecole des Sciences Politiques in Paris. In 1945 and 1950 he worked as a journalist and traveled to Latin America and China. In 1956 he became the first representative of the Algerian National Liberation Front and later of the provisional government of the Republic of Algeria in the United States. The author, working in 1956 at the United Nations headquarters as a journalist, met Chanderli. After the recognition of Algerian freedom by de Gaulle, Mr. Chanderli became the first permanent representative of his country to the United Nations. He returned to Algeria in 1965 and became director general of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Mr. Chanderli has been general manager of CAMEL, the Compagnie Algérienne du Méthane Liquide (Liquefied Natural Gas Company of Algeria).
As the first Algerian representative at the United Nations during the time of the war of liberation of Algeria and after independence, looking back to that period, what are in your view the important changes that happened over the past for, say, twenty years, in your country?
Well, it's an easy and difficult question at the same time. We made tremendous progress in a very short period. At the same time we feel that it is not enough, that we are not moving fast enough. We would like to increase
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the speed. We did make progress. We are working very hard. We realize that to establish peace and develop the country is even harder than fighting the war of liberation.
Therefore, the prospects are, because of the energy of the population, because of the dynamic spirit which was acquired during the revolution - which is still living within the people - we probably will keep the pace and make more progress. It seems to be agreed worldwide that Algeria is little by little taking its right place in world affairs. Also, Algeria is more and more considered as a good example of a country utilizing all its resources for the progress of the people and the development of the country.
When did Algeria discover its enormous gas potential?
The gas was discovered back in 1956, but at the time we were under French administration. It so happened that the French were not very much interested in natural gas.
Nobody had realized the potentialities of our gas reserves in terms of a product to be exported. Therefore, only after independence did we take a chance and enter the liquid gas business, which requires a highly advanced technology and would surely open the gate to this new experience in transforming and exporting, even over very long distances, a product which is clean. Natural gas is not polluting. We transport it by special huge tankers over long distances. We actually cross the Atlantic to the United States with our gas. We could go to Japan. We can go anywhere with these ships because of the tremendous compressibility of this product.
You freeze the gas.
That's right. By the way, the gas fields are about 500 kilometers from the coast.
So you bring it to the coast and then freeze the gas.
Yes. It's brought to the coast in the form of gas and then it is transformed into liquid at very low temperatures, 160 degrees centigrade. At that moment it becomes liquid. Every cubic meter represents 600 times its volume. Thus, one ship, going from Algeria to the East Coast of the United States - if it's a ship of let's say 40,000 cubic meters - will carry twenty-four million cubic meters of gas. This would mean the consumption of a city of a hundred thousand people for an entire year. By one ship only!
Most of these ships are Japanese. Why?
No, not really. The greatest of the methane tankers is not Japanese, but
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French. Many of these ships are built in France. The French are very advanced in this type of technology. The Swedish are now building a couple of ships, and the Americans and the British have some. The Japanese shipyards have been late.
Did the French assist Algeria with the technology for developing the gas industry?
Yes and no. They helped, but our technology really is new. The technological contributions also come from the Americans, and the British are very good in this field. They have been extremely active in the gas industry.
What exactly happens if this frozen gas arrives in the United States? How do you defreeze it and how does it reach the consumers?
It is a very simple operation. The gas, in order to reach the receiving line in liquid form, is put into pipes and sea water is run over these pipes. The difference between the temperature of the liquid in the pipe and the sea-water temperature makes it become gas again. Just decompress it and it's gas. It is that easy. To make it liquid, however, is a difficult operation. It needs a complicated and very expensive plant to do this job.
I understand that you have signed some important contracts, with the El Paso Gas Company, for example.
Yes. I was a member of the Algerian team negotiating with American companies. We signed large, important contracts with a number of companies, including El Paso. We have now committed something around thirty billion cubic meters of gas to the United States over a period of twenty years.
This would bring roughly how much in foreign currency to Algeria?
It's a bit difficult to say because it is a complicated affair. The returns would be really valuable only after six, seven years, because the investments are enormous. As I said before, it's a very expensive technology. The ships are also the most expensive ships in the world. Therefore, amortization takes time. But the returns will be quite substantial after a period of six, seven years.
You are probably aware that the Club of Rome has organized at MIT a computer study of the future. Have you made any studies of future demands for gas?
Yes, we have computers working on that, and right now we have com- | |
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mitted as far as Algerian resources are concerned about sixty billion cubic meters a year of gas for a period of twenty years. This means that we will be able to meet these requirements for, I would say, sixty years.
Professor Carroll Wilson of MIT estimated the world energy situation in the July, 1973, issue of Foreign Affairs. Five months later, in a conversation with Anthony Lewis of the New York Times, he already changed his estimates. He realized it was much worse than he saw it in July. What is your view on these energy estimates for the future?
The energy situation is something which has to be tackled now with a seriousness that has never before existed. Modern sources of energy, which are basically oil and gas, have been jeopardized by the irresponsible management of the big international companies. I think it's absolutely crazy to waste a product which is not only a source of energy but also a fundamental raw material. Oil and gas, as you know, can be transformed into so many things. With oil or gas you can produce almost anything, including beefsteaks! Therefore, simply burning oil is a grave mistake. The companies have been assuming that this source of energy was something to last for a long time. Resources cannot last. Whatever is gone is gone forever, and will take many centuries to replace.
In the future we will have to speed up research to find new sources of pure energy, either coming back to coal with new techniques, or quickly developing nuclear research, or finding other substitutes and keeping the oil and gas mostly as a ‘matière première.’ I don't think that after this crisis the world will go back to the situation as it was before. The crisis will open the eyes of all those who are responsible for the welfare of the population of the world at large. They will have to consider their evolution - and revolution - in the energy problem, as soon as possible, or the world cannot survive as it is.
From your vantage point, what international body should handle this question globally?
Well, I am a member of several international organizations that have been working on this subject, but we are not powerful enough. Our efforts are not combined yet. For instance, there are a number of countries working on solar energy and some are working to utilise the energies of the sea. All these ideas have been in the air, and in the laboratories and institutes, for a long time, but nothing has been seriously considered on the industrial level. It's high time that some groups or some international group take this up and work on it very properly and very seriously.
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Would then the United Nations be the ultimate body?
Maybe the United Nations, but I am afraid the United Nations is too big to begin with, and too slow, too bureaucratic. What we really need is a serious group of scientists who have the confidence of all the countries concerned and start working hard with the cooperation and eventually the financing of the producing countries. It should really be an affair involving all of humanity, because even the producing countries - eighty years, seventy years, sixty years from now - sooner or later will run short of energy. Their resources will have been used up and they too will have to find other sources of energy.
Do you realize that in the United States they discovered that if you take in one day of sunlight on the surface of Lake Erie, if it could be harnessed, that energy would be equal to all the energy consumed by Americans during an entire year? Yet, the United States spends at the moment only thirteen million dollars on research in solar energy.
I agree. It was terribly shortsighted to have been so timid in investing in research on this subject. A big effort should be made.
Do you also feel that economic growth is still very very much needed in order to speed up the development of the Third World nations?
Well, as you well know, the gap between the developing countries and the industrialized countries is getting bigger and bigger. Here again is a problem which should be faced with great speed and urgency. The rich are getting richer; the poor are getting poorer, and the danger of an explosion increases. Perhaps the violent reaction in the Arab lands in the autumn of 1973 made the energy crisis a symbol, an expression of resentment on behalf of the developing countries. The highly developed countries, which have built up this fantastically irresponsible so-called society of consumption, will have to rethink these matters.
I have the impression that Algeria is doing enormous business in dollars now - in gas, for example. Could some of those billions eventually benefit the people of Algeria?
At present, the money we earn in selling some of our natural resources is automatically invested in equipment to industrialize the country - to ‘fill the gap.’ But we will need more time and more money to succeed. Moreover, the prices of modern plant equipment, together with the high cost of training people, are also factors in the slowness in filling the gap. There must be stronger and more independent intervention from the developed
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countries to help the developing countries to get on their feet. There are some signs in this area. At least, the Europeans, in their latest statements made in Copenhagen and Brussels, are indicating that, after all, they realize there should be very close cooperation between developing and developed countries. This is a first move, which should grow in importance not only between Europe and the Mediterranean countries but also in the world at large.
The transfer of technology is still a big problem in the world we live in. You know very well that we are blocked even if we were to spend the money earned in our own countries for the goals of progress - industrializing, for instance.
In the developing lands we have to pay exorbitant prices to be allowed to use patents, licenses, and know-how from the rich nations. As long as know-how is kept as a sort of exclusive property, as long as limitations are put on the granting of licenses to the developing countries, then there can be no real progress.
Whatever progress we make, the developed countries will make even more, so the gap will remain. The owners of highly technological societies will have to give up something. For historical reasons they learned faster, they made more progress than others. It's high time they shared with others, giving the less fortunate the chance to join in and build a more harmonious world community than the present one, in which two-thirds of the world population starves and the other third overeats.
Are you hopeful that under the pressure of recent events we are moving in that direction?
I have to be hopeful. You have to be optimistic, otherwise you go kill yourself. Therefore I am hopeful. However, more men - more leaders - should speak strongly on this subject and make perfectly clear that what I said would be in the interest of all concerned. The egotistic attitude of so many nations must be changed overnight.
When the nonaligned nations call more conferences in Algeria to discuss common policies, I imagine the same bloc of states will also take the initiative to bring scientists together to start laying the foundation for the kind of cooperation you have just discussed.
I am not sure that they would succeed unless the existing political tensions were out of the way.
Already in 1960, I think it was, and then in 1964, there were two attempts made under the auspices of the United Nations and UNESCO to study these
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matters at length. One of these conferences lasted something like thirty days, trying to tackle the basic fundamental problem of the transfer of technology. The conference was a disaster; the developed nations made it so difficult that nothing happened. The problem is not solved yet.
But that was more than a decade ago.
Perhaps now, under the pressure of the general world situation, people will react differently. Perhaps in such a conference of nonaligned countries there could be a real discussion of these problems and we could find solutions possibly by an international body in which everybody were involved. Then, the United Nations again could play a part. Bear in mind that if the conference were called by one group or another it would be looked upon as undue pressure. If it were to be called by an international body in which every state in the world is a member, then we might have a chance.... Through UNESCO, perhaps.
The UN could even create a special body - they are always creating bodies which are absolutely hopeless as well as useless - but this one would be basic.
Professor Richard N. Gardner took the initiative to UNITAR. Maybe it should be UNITAR that takes the initiative.
To gather scientists? UNITAR is a very weak organization. They have no money. They are in my view a bunch of nice people - trying hard, no doubt, but with no strength. They could not impose a final decision. What we are looking for is some kind of group or institution capable of making decisions acceptable to everyone. They would decide, let us say, that from now on technology is to be freely transferred.
In the past - the Middle Ages, the Greek period, the Arab period of a thousand years ago - technology was transferred with no problem from one people to the other. With that attitude, the classical civilizations were rotated to one other in a fair and smooth way. Now, so-called Western civilization is keeping to its own marbles, without letting anybody else use them. How long can they go on doing that? How long can the West keep the huge population of China or India at arm's length? They have to give up this attitude. They have got to exchange, to share. I don't think the Chinese, five thousand years ago, had anybody pay for their licenses. I don't think the Greeks made anybody pay for their science, technology, or philosophy. Surely the Arabs, who passed along their own technology, together with what they acquired from the Greeks, Romans, and Persians, all the way to Europe at the time of the Middle Ages, I don't think they charged anything
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for that. It was just a normal gesture. If you know how to build a bridge, then you teach somebody how to build a bridge - without demanding money for your knowledge.
Even the Russians have to go down on their knees more or less to get technology from the Americans.
Even the Russians - that's right. They have to buy and to pay cash for it. And pay a lot as well. How long can you keep others on their knees imploring you to teach them what you have learned due to historical reasons? Those who are begging today were the leaders of civilization in the past. Look at the history of the Asian nations. They were highly civilized while Westerners were living in huts and wearing bearskins.
When Cordoba was streetlit, London was a village of huts. Now it would seem the other way around. London, Paris, and other ‘cities of light’ could give a little bit more ‘light’ to those who are now still in darkness.
Let us postulate that one developing country possessing natural gas wishes to produce synthetic rubber, for which one needs gas. But the technology needed to produce synthetic rubber is controlled by a number of countries which own the licenses for this production process. When you address yourself as a developing producer to the companies who own the licenses, they say, ‘We can sell you the right to use our patent and thus you will have the technical know-how to make synthetic rubber with your product, but you cannot sell the rubber anywhere but in your own land.’
In economic terms, a small plant is not economically viable within one country. It has to expand and to export.
Is that what is happening in the developing world?
That's what is happening. ‘You can buy our patent for Algeria,’ we are being told, ‘but you sell only in Algeria. You cannot sell to Yugoslavia. You cannot go into other markets because these are our markets. We are not going to give you a chance to be our competitor.’
Therefore, when we make our calculations and when we run them through a computer we see that a plant producing only for Algeria cannot survive economically because the consumption would be too small. This goes on all the time.
What the hell can they do if you go out and sell anyway?
I suppose we could go to The Hague and have a trial at the International Court. But we would lose because we wouldn't have the right to use a patent
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which is the property of some group, if this group were not willing to share its property, which is its discovery.
You see, they have got to want to share. As long as they refuse to share we are in a mess.
These companies are very angry, for example, at the Arab countries, because the Arabs are making it difficult to use their oil. But the companies themselves have for generations been refusing to share their advantages - particularly in technological know-how, training, and, last but not least, education. How much are the companies spending for education? How much are they spending in their laboratories on research? You said the United States is spending only thirteen million dollars on research for the development of solar energy - they should be spending 200 million! Thirteen million is peanuts.
Instead of bombing Hanoi at the rate of many millions a day?
Or, for that matter, spending so much money transporting weapons to the Middle East to make sure the war there will last. Wars are going on among countries that do not manufacture weapons - the weapons are being made by the developed countries.
We live in the midst of a fantastic misunderstanding which is creating a very dangerous situation. I would not like it to happen tomorrow, but we are rapidly moving toward a huge explosion because of the gap between rich and poor. Sooner or later people with bare hands will be more powerful than all the damned sophisticated weapons together. You cannot destroy one million people. You cannot destroy one billion people. You have to live with them or die!
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