Issaouane Erg with foreign assistance, including from Korea and Spain (Repsol signed an agreement to invest and explore in 1990). The oilfield has been in production since late 1998. Issaouane Erg The Issaouane Erg (also called Issaouane-N-Irrararene) is an approximately 38,000 km erg (sand sea) in Algeria's portion of the Sahara desert, located at . The Issaouane Erg is located near the Ahaggar Mountains. It is part of a major dune field that extends from Issaouane Erg in the north to the Sudanese Erg in the south, flanked by the Libyan erg of Murzuq. In the north, the Issaouane Erg ends at
Issaouane Erg which can take hundreds of thousands of years to form; mesoscale dunes (including the stardunes), which form on the mega dunes; and yet smaller ones which migrate over the bigger ones. In the NASA images, the light-blue spots in the valleys between the dunes (which are red from iron oxide) are "sabkhah", or salt flats, left after the evaporation of accumulated water. Neolithic artifacts, sculptures and paintings have been found in the Issouane Erg. from the Kiffian culture. The Issaouane Erg contains oil; the Tifernine oilfield is explored by the Algerian state oil company Sonatrach, which began developing the oilfield