Editor’s Note: This column is part of a regular series by industry veteran Brad Hitch for NGI’s LNG Insight dedicated to addressing the complexities of the global natural gas market.

Since last year, Europe’s oldest LNG provider has stepped in with a significant increase in supply during the continent’s hour of need to partially offset the loss of Russian natural gas imports.

Algeria’s liquefied natural gas exports started in 1964, a turbulent period that was the country’s first in a series of policy-driven export cycles that have seemingly led to the latest increase in Algerian output.

The Algerian policy shift that led to favorable natural gas and LNG price increases in the early 1980s, for example, created two specific features of the Atlantic Basin LNG trade...