Providing a gateway to the Sahara, the world's largest desert, Algeria is remembered as the home in times past of the elite French Foreign Legion. Immortalised in P.C. Wren's novel Beau Gest, the Legion fought Berber tribesmen under a blazing sun in the arid desert wastest. But today the desert has a new images.

Over four-fifth of Algeria is cover by the Sahara, and it was beneath its unproductive surface that enormous oil and gas field were discovered in the 1950s. Today, Algeria is the third largest oil producer in Africa-only Nigeria and Libya produce more. Reserves of crude oil are estimated at 9.2 billion barrels, and Algeria also possesses the fourth largest reserves of natural gas in the world-a staggering 3090 thousand million m3 (109 122 thousand million cu ft).