Assignment Algeria - 1978-80 (Part I)

Author’s Note: This is the second in a series of articles chronicling the early years of my career in International Human Resources across the Middle East and North Africa.

Just over a thousand miles out of Gatwick, the British Caledonia 707 touched down uneventfully at the Algiers-Houari Boumediene Airport in the early morning hours in the summer of 1978.

After completing an earlier assignment off the coast of Abu Dhabi and a relatively short stint back in the headquarters office, I once again found myself heading out on assignment - this time to the northern coast of Africa and the luxuriously fertile, desolately arid landscapes of Algeria – a country of amazing contrasts and stark, breathtaking beauty.  

I have often thought of the ‘70’s as the time during which fashion took a holiday.

But it was also a time that saw a strong and viable global market for the capture and distribution of natural gas begin to emerge.  All across the Middle East, North Africa and Southeast Asia, Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) plants were either under consideration or already under construction, large specially designed cryogenic tankers were being built for its transport and regasification facilities planned in the commercial markets the gas would serve.

It was also a time when my employer was heavily engaged in the Algerian gas industry, surveying and tapping gas reservoirs to capture it, laying hundreds of miles of pipeline to transport it and building processing plants to supercool and liquefy the gas for export. 

And it was also a time when I was once again given the opportunity to gain invaluable HR experience and work, live and explore other remote and intriguing parts of the world. 

During the two years I was to spend in Algeria, I would work on several of the company’s projects scattered across the country, taking me along the coast, mountains and desolate desert landscapes of this fascinating part of the world. The cities and villages of Algiers, Tipasa, Arzew, Djelfa, Lagouat, Hassi-R’ Mel, Hassi Messaoud, and Rhourde Nous would quickly become part of the company’s lexicon as well as frequently visited destinations of our day-to-day operations.

Arriving in country, I was assigned temporarily to a major gas pipeline project to assist in its early start-up and mobilization. Upon clearing airport immigration and customs, I was met by our company driver, and was immediately made aware of the shortcomings of my conversational French. Skirting the outer edges of Algiers, we drove west along tree-lined roads on the northern coast, through vineyards bursting with as yet un-harvested grapes, past fading, white-washed facades of post-colonial development and all the while afforded spectacular views of the of the dazzlingly blue Mediterranean. Too soon we arrived at our destination in the small town of Tipasa. 

Tipasa is a coastal village dating back to antiquity and once home to Phoenician merchants and Roman legionnaires, was now home to a French-built resort that served as a project office and “base camp” for our desert pipeline operations. At first blush the place seemed idyllic, but on closer inspection, the years of neglected maintenance had obviously taken their toll. The setting however, was spectacular – resting on miles of sandy beaches curving majestically along the peninsular coastline.

As Algeria ostensibly leaned quite far to the left politically, its beach resorts were a haven for Eastern European tourists. Our project had taken over the lobby and ground floor of one of the hotel buildings for office space and it was not uncommon for bikini-clad vacationers to stroll through the open areas of the office en route to the beach, providing a unique and not unwelcome diversion from the day's tasks (Toto, I’ve a feeling we’re not on Das Island anymore!).

The Tipasa resort served as the administrative support center, accommodation for the project’s coast-based staff and home to all the families of senior project personnel. The actual project site was 360 miles to the south in the rocky plains and bleak loneliness of the northern Sahara, at Hassi R’Mel, home to Africa’s largest gas reserves and, bikini-clad tourists aside, more than warranting the hardship pay we received.

After a week or so of project orientation on the coast, I made my first trip to the Sahara – an 8 hour drive that would quickly become common-place during my time in Algeria.  As domestic air travel to many of the project sites was either unavailable or too infrequent to be a viable option, the project had purchased a fleet of Peugeot 504’s for travel over the country’s main roads and highways. US-built 4-wheel drives were reserved for the more difficult desert terrain.

The journey south can only be described as extraordinary - in a matter of hours, one was transported from the verdurous fields and the rolling hills of the coast to some of the world’s most desolate locations. All roads were two lane blacktops and Route N1, the Trans-Sahara Highway, contrary to its name, was no different. Heading south from Algiers and leaving the coast behind, one entered the Chiffa Gorge, snaking its way through the picturesque canyons of the Tell Atlas Mountains.  The Gorge is also home to troops of monkeys called Barbary Apes, who are both photogenic and when given the opportunity of an open vehicle, naturally born petty thieves!

From the majestic beauty of the Gorge and surrounding mountains, one descended through the alluvial debris of the high plains ultimately arriving in the small town of Djelfa that serves as a point of transition between the steppe-like plateaus of the north and the Sahara to the south.

Djelfa was now home to a refurbished double-jointing facility the company had recently taken over. Double jointing, as the name implies, takes two standard lengths (or joints) of pipe and welds them together to form up to one 80 foot length prior to transport to the various field locations. This saves time by reducing the amount of actual welding that would need to be done under more difficult conditions in the field. 

From Djelfa, the journey continues south with the rock-strewn plains of the northern Sahara reluctantly giving way to the palm-shrouded oasis of Laghouat. This village provided the last taste of civilization before continuing south to the barren landscape of Hassi R’Mel. 

Against much of this unremarkable terrain, one finds truly remarkable histories of Roman legions and Neolithic rock carvings and fascinating tales of the exotic courtesans of the Ouled Nail Mountains. Our current journey, however, is less colorful with only the occasional rocky outcropping breaking up the monotony of the last leg of our journey south.

Hassi R’Mel was essentially a collection of desert construction camps, built by major international oil and gas contractors and still serves as an intermediate stage for the gas and oil pipelines coming up from Hassi Messaoud, another of the country’s reservoirs, further to the southeast. From here our pipeline would carry natural gas nearly 400 miles northwest to the Mediterranean coast where it would feed the soon-to-be commissioned LNG plants of Arzew.

Pipeline projects are unique and US pipeliners are a rare breed indeed. Men as hard as the hostile Algerian terrain they worked across, they hail from the likes of Broken Bow, Oklahoma and the oil fields of Odessa, Texas. Pay them on time and feed them well and they will give you 14 hours flat out, every day, seven days a week. And as several paymasters and camp cooks could attest, failure to deliver on either of these conditions was known to have its consequences! Non-pipeliners, or “shiny asses” like myself, were often called upon to prove their mettle via any number of clandestine, after-hours rituals usually involving vast quantities of alcohol!

To supplement US field supervision and given the shortage of skilled labor in Algeria, the project staffing plan called for the recruitment of welders, pipefitters and equipment operators from Argentina, tapping a talent pool of skilled craftsmen from the company’s earlier projects in Latin America.

In the early stages of the project, delays in the custom clearance of construction material and equipment placed much of project mobilization on hold. As a result, our HR team, comprised of Algerian nationals, US, European and Argentine expats, focused primarily on limited local staffing, developing project procedures and cementing local government relations - putting in to place efficient processes to secure work permits, tax clearances and exit visas for the expatriate staff.  Algeria is comprised of 48 provinces called wilayas and relationships needed to be established with officials in each of the wilayas along the route the pipeline would take.

On the coast, issues of a much different nature required our attention. I had mentioned earlier that the beach resort suffered from years of neglect and this carried over to the hotel’s restaurants and kitchens. Hygiene standards were lax and for project personnel and families residing on the coast and taking most of their meals at the hotel, diarrhea and other stomach ailments became a way of life. And not unlike today’s mobile phones, toilet paper was an essential accessory to one’s daily wardrobe.

So in true pipeline fashion, the project simply commandeered a long-unused restaurant on the hotel property. And in a very fortuitous turn of events, I was quickly dispatched, together with a list of staffing requirements, to France to recruit a full complement of restaurant staff. Working together with our Paris Office, all manner of butchers, chefs, sous-chefs and bakers were interviewed, hired and sent on their way to the kitchens and ovens of our coastal hotel. Once staffed with a full complement of French culinary talent, “our” restaurant quickly became one of the best dining establishments on the northern coast and the project’s alimentary ailments and concerns, like Tipasa’s Roman ruins, were now a thing of the past.

On a more serious note, when working in developing countries and in remote locations, one of the highest priorities and most difficult challenges is the effective planning and management of medical emergencies… and Algeria was challenging indeed (duty of care is by no means a recent development). Providing only the most basic of medical services and with local hospitals’ endemic lack of hygiene, one did not want to get sick or suffer serious injury in country.

In response to these factors, each project was staffed with our own expatriate medical personnel and the company had a long-established relationship with Europ Assistance, the excellent Paris-based air ambulance service.

But unfortunately, medical emergencies do occur and very often severely tax the planning and detailed procedures developed to deal with them. Although road travel at night, especially in the desert, was strongly discouraged, expedience sometimes trumps caution and the first incident, a horrific traffic accident, occurred in the middle of the night, deep in the desert.  A message was relayed to the coast via the hotel operator (note that mobile phones were yet to come on the scene), that a seriously injured expatriate employee, together with the project medical officer, was en route to Algiers and would require immediate medical evacuation.

With one urgent phone call, Europ Assistance sprang into action and with both our patient and an air ambulance speeding towards Algiers, an emergency response team of Algerian and expatriate staff was quickly assembled and briefed on the situation. Then armed with little more than an unrelenting commitment to deliver our employee from harm's way, the team took off from the hotel complex – one group heading to the airport to facilitate Europ Assistance’s arrival and the other to the local government hospital to await our patient’s arrival.

Nearly forty years ago, the Algiers airport was ill-equipped and generally unprepared, to receive an unscheduled air ambulance arriving in the middle of the night. However, our airport team, never to be deterred, were able to quickly convince the overwhelmed airport officials to accept the team’s surrendered passports as collateral for the expeditious immigration clearance of the French medical personnel.

Miraculously (and I use this term literally), the medical team arrived at the hospital, within a short time of the patient’s arrival. With amazing speed and efficiency, the Europ Assistance team secured and stabilized our patient and quickly whisked him away to the American Hospital in Paris where he was to fully recover from his injuries.  During my tenure in country we would be called upon to manage two more emergency medical evacuations, but those stories are best saved for another time.

There were further North African adventure ahead, but they would be somewhat delayed. My scheduled time on the project was quickly coming to an end and with mobilization still delayed, I returned to the U.S. Ironically, however, shortly after my return, the project’s Algerian custom’s issues were resolved, all construction materials were released and project mobilization was assigned the highest priority. Given my familiarization with the project and being somewhat between assignments and available, I was quickly directed to Buenos Aires to coordinate the recruitment effort and mobilization of the Argentine craftsman.

Home to world champion soccer teams, world-renowned beef and a wonderfully attractive mixture of European and Latin cultures and genetics, Argentina was an exciting and welcome change of pace from the deserts of North Africa.  And to add even more color to the occasion, my arrival coincided with the 1979 Argentine Grand Prix. Drivers such as Niki Lauda, James Hunt and Emerson Fittipaldi together with an alluring array of Formula One circuit followers, flooded the major hotels, stylishly decorating the swimming pools, bars, restaurants and the celebrity watering holes of the capital. 

But urgency was in the air and there were still 400 miles of 48” pipe to lay across the desert, so together with our Argentine recruiting agent, the next several weeks were spent sourcing and securing pipeline professionals for immediate mobilization to Algeria.  Our agent's intimate knowledge of experienced industry artisans in country, was instrumental in expediting our recruiting efforts, and in a relatively short period of time, with the last of the craftsman duly processed, visas granted and flights to Algiers confirmed, I was once again headed for home.  

From the sandy beaches of the Mediterranean coast to the sandy desolation of the northern Sahara, and from the Place de la Concorde to the Plaza de Mayo, what a fascinating five months it had been! 

I had by no means, however, seen the last of Algeria. A few short months later, a newly awarded project would lead me back to North Africa by way of Edmonton, Alberta. 

White-washed masonries and mosques of Algier’s Casbah, the enchanting Haitian proprietress of the US embassy’s snack bar, the date palm oases and walled citadels of the M’Zab Valley and the storms and shifting sands of the Sahara’s Grand Erg Oriental… all of this and more in Part II...soon to follow!