Sudan Signs North Darfur Oil Exploration Agreement
Sudan granted oil exploration rights in North Darfur, the state-run SUNA news service said, a week after the country’s oil minister said a field in South Darfur will be offered to investors.
The Oil Ministry signed an exploration agreement with the Greater Sahara group, Khartoum-based SUNA said yesterday, citing North Darfur Governor Othman Youssef Kebir. The group includes Sudan’s state-run Sudapet Co. and a company called AlQahtani, according to Sudanese Petroleum Corp.’s Web site.
The move may anger rebels in the region, where more than six years of conflict, along with disease, banditry and tribal fighting have led to the death of 300,000, according to United Nations estimates. The Sudanese government puts the number of violence-related deaths at 10,000.
Only “after peace is reached, can companies invest in Darfur’s oil,” Ahmed Hussein, a spokesman for the Justice and Equality Movement, one of the main Darfur rebel groups, said in a phone interview from Doha, Qatar. “The government uses the money from oil investment against the people, not for them.”
Greater Sahara will explore for crude in the so-called 12A concession, Kebir said.
Finding oil is vital for the economic growth of North Sudan should the semi-autonomous South Sudan choose to secede in a 2011 referendum. The vote is part of a 2005 peace agreement that ended a two-decade civil war between the two regions. The south produces most of Sudan’s output of about 500,000 barrels a day.
Elections
Oil findings in Darfur are unlikely to trigger violence, Fouad Hikmat, the Sudan adviser for the Brussels-based International Crisis Group think-tank, said by phone. “What is going to provoke the situation if the election goes by without finding a settlement to the Darfur crisis.”
Sudan is set to hold its first democratic presidential and parliamentary elections in 24 years in April.
Sudan wants oil companies to develop a new oilfield in South Darfur and is planning to offer the area to investors “soon,” Energy and Mining Minister Al-Zubair Ahmed Al-Hassan said on Jan. 27.
The Sudanese government says security in Darfur has improved, a claim disputed by rebel groups which took up arms against the government in 2003, accusing it of neglecting the region and demanding a bigger share of wealth and power.
Foreign oil workers in Sudan have been subject to attacks in the past. In October 2008, nine Chinese oil workers were kidnapped in the central Southern Kordofan state. Five were killed during a botched attempt by the Sudanese armed forces to free them.
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