Thousands of demonstrators returned to the streets of Algeria on Oct. 30 to protest the system of entrenched power that they feel still has a stranglehold on the country despite a series of high-profile arrests and official resignations. “We’re continuing to protest because we don’t trust the system,” Riad Mostefai, a young apprentice hairdresser, told Reuters from central Algiers. “It might regenerate.”

In mid-October, the “pouvoir,” the commonly used term for the unofficial networks of power seen as controlling the country, added to protesters' list of concerns when the Council of Ministers approved government proposals intended to overhaul Sonatrach, the leaden state-run oil and gas company. Now the controversial measures must pass in a yet-to-be-scheduled vote in parliament, and in addition, it has to pass the test of Hirak, the popular protest movement channeling Algerians' discontent, which sees the move as an attempt by the caretaker government to entrench itself.

Hirak has morphed and grown through months of rigorous protest. Exploding in February in a gut reaction against then-President Abdelaziz Bouteflika’s plan to run for a fifth term, the movement has spread through large segments of Algerian society. For many of the overwhelmingly young protesters, it has come to encapsulate the widespread rejection of what they perceive to be a closed and corrupt nexus of industry, the military and government that has lorded over the people for generations. 

While the corruption that has flourished has taken many forms, the administration of the country’s hydrocarbon deposits has cut particularly deeply. Algeria ranks 10th among countries with proven reserves of natural gas. Moreover, it stands sixth in global gas exports and possesses the third largest proven reserves of shale gas.