The historiography of the Algerian war (1954-1962) has tended to focus on political, diplomatic, military and cultural aspects: while most works on the conflict regard strictly French-Algerian relations, attention has been given especially in the last decade to international implications. However, two topics have been surprisingly neglected, whose importance can hardly be overestimated: the search for energy resources and the security issues connected to it.

The struggle to access oil and gas exploration in the Algerian Sahara has been essential to the development of the conflict: it predates its diplomatic internationalisation, marked by the French bombing of the Tunisian village of Sakiet Sidi Youssef in early 1958, and provides a telling example of the dynamics involved in a transnational network of knowledge exchanges.

Hydrocarbon exploration is closely linked with issues of French national security, as the Sahara was one of the French areas, on which France was aiming at building up its energy autonomy from the Americans. In my paper, I look at processes of political decolonisation and concurrent oilonisation of Algeria, focussing on the role of the institutions and oil companies from the three countries mainly involved in these issues: France, the US and Italy.

The collection of intelligence on the Algerian subsoil carried out by US diplomats and oil companies, together with the prominent role of the US in the Cold War, gave the Americans a favourable opportunity to enter Algeria. Such move was further helped by the French need for financial and technological resources to carry out a thorough exploration of the geologically complex Saharan area, which forced French administrations to modify their Saharan policies according to the current power relations.

At the same time the Italian public oil company, willing to carry out a policy of expansion of national industrial interests to the Mediterranean, started daring negotiations with the Algerian fighters in order to achieve exploration advantages after independence, at the expenses of the French. The Italians helped the Algerians educate their oil élites and frame a picture of the energy possibilities of their land, through several intelligence exchanges between Algerian leaders and Italian geologists-geophysicists.

By the end of the Algerian war in 1962, although the French managed to keep a priority position in the post-colonial oil market, the Americans would hold a considerable stake in the Algerians resources. The Italians, despite giving up oil exploration in Algeria after the death of their oil company’s charismatic president, would still keep close relations with the administration of the new country, ultimately shifting their interest to gas.