Algeria

Insolvent Swiss oil refiner Petroplus owes Algerian state energy firm Sonatrach over $250 million in unpaid bills, an Algerian energy sector official told Reuters. Sonatrach has not received payment for several cargoes of crude it delivered to the refiner, the source said, without specifying what action, if any, the Algerian firm planned to take to recover the money. Late last year, Petroplus said lenders had frozen a credit facility which it was using to buy crude for delivery to its refineries. It filed for insolvency protection in January.

The Algerian subsidiary of ArcelorMittal, the iron and steel multinational, faces bankruptcy at its plant in El-Hadjar in the east of the country, a union official said Thursday, Agence France-Presse reported. "The declaration of bankruptcy is imminent. The complex is crushed under a debt of $120 million," the secretary-general of the Smain Kouadria union told AFP, Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review reported.