Sudan tells Total and White Nile to share
A Sudanese committee seeking to resolve disputed oil concession rights in the semi-autonomous south has recommended that France's Total and UK player White Nile work together in the same block.
Reuters quoted South Sudan's Vice President Riek Machar as saying today the committee had agreed to a similar arrangement in another block where Malaysia's Petronas and Moldova's Ascom Group have conflicting claims.
Machar, in announcing the decision, pronounced as "over" the contested issue of exploration rights over large areas of the south.
"The National Committee recommended to the National Petroleum Commission that Block B can be a consortium that will include all, that is Total being the operator and White Nile being a member in it," Machar said.
"Similarily in Block 5B there will be a new consortium composed of Petronas, Ascom, Lundin and ONGC, Sudapet and Nilepet," Reuters quoted Machar as saying.
South Sudan's semi-autonomous government had allowed exploratory drilling by White Nile and Ascom in areas already claimed by Total and Petronas, which say they signed with Khartoum before a 2005 peace deal ended more than two decades of north-south civil war.
Most of Sudan's oil lies in the landlocked south, although refineries and pipelines are in the north.
White Nile, which is 50% owned by state petroleum company Nilepet, started drilling its first well in its disputed 67,000 square kilometre concession in south Sudan last month. Its block was part of a larger concession previously assigned to Total by the Khartoum government.
White Nile had estimated that it has 3 billion to 5 billion barrels of oil in its Block Ba concession, but that it would take four years before the oil starts to flow.
Machar said that Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir and southern President Salva Kiir had signed off on the committee recommendations.
"It was passed by the National Petroleum Commission at which those co-chairs were present," Machar said. He said Ascom and White Nile, which had been asked by Kiir to stop operations in the south, should restart operations soon.
"We don't know when but it would be soon because it would be a loss if they don't resume operations as the dispute has been settled," Machar said. "It's now a bygone, they should now start thinking how to do their operations as a new consortium."
- Database Search
- Unpaid Debt A comprehensive overview of the role of the Lundin Consortium in the oil war. ECOS calls upon the Swedish, Austrian and Malaysian governments to investigate whether, as a matter of international law, Lundin, OMV and Petronas 'were complicit in the commission of war crimes and crimes against humanity by others during the period 1997-2003.’ In response, the Swedish Public Prosecutor for International crimes opened a criminal investigation into ‘links between Sweden and the reported crimes’.
- In Depth For more specific information about the Lundin court case please visit the Unpaid Debt dossier.
