South Sudan mulls new oil export routes
South Sudan will examine alternative outlets for its oil exports if it makes any new discoveries, so as to break its reliance on infrastructure that ties it to the north, the ruling party said on Wednesday.
"Southern Sudan is emerging as a landlocked country and... will be looking not only to be reliant on one single outlet like Port Sudan," said Pagan Amum, the secretary general of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement.
"If there are more oil finds that will justify building new pipelines, then those will be built," he said.
Currently, around 80 percent of Sudan's oil output of around 500,000 barrels per day is pumped from the south through two pipelines that connect it to the north's Port Sudan export terminal.
South Sudan is due to gain international recognition as an independent state in July after southerners voted almost unanimously for secession in a landmark referendum last month.
The future sharing of the revenues from the south's oil fields is one of the key outstanding issues that the two sides still have to resolve. Southern officials want to replace the current 50-50 split with the payment of transit fees for the use of the north's infrastructure.
For some time, they have eyed the Kenyan coastal city Mombasa as the likeliest alternative export route for the south's oil, which generates more than 95 percent of the regional government's income.
As other possible outlets, Amum mentioned the Kenyan port of Lamu, Djibouti, which would require building a pipeline through Ethiopia, or the Democratic Republic of Congo, which would give south Sudan access to the Atlantic.
Industry analysts have voiced scepticism about the commercial feasibility of such massive pipeline projects, given the size of the south's current proven reserves.
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