A dispute over oil revenue sharing jeopardises Sudan budget
Juba, Sudan - A dispute over oil revenue sharing between Sudan's north and south could half the new south Sudan government's budget, creating a crisis in the area devastated by more than two decades of war, an official said on Wednesday.
A January peace deal ended the civil war which claimed more than 2-million lives in Sudan's south. The deal envisages power sharing, democratic transformation and the sharing of south Sudan's oil wealth roughly 50:50 between the north and south.
But the former rebel Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA), which formed a government based in the southern capital Juba in September, said the northern government was claiming one of Sudan's two main southern oilfields was actually in the north.
"We have not agreed on which wells are in southern Sudan and this depends on...the demarcation of the border between north and south as of 1956 when Sudan got independence (from Britain)," southern Information Minister Samson Kwaje said.
"We are told that the oil revenues was going to be about $1,3-billion (about R8,7-billion)...the estimate now is that it is less than $700-million," he said, adding the government was claiming the Heglig oilfield was in the north.
The government of southern Sudan is meeting to discuss its 2006 budget in Juba this week. But Kwaje said this dispute, if unresolved, could render that process meaningless.
"If it is not well handled then the estimates that we are now presently making absolutely will not total up to anything and that means crisis in southern Sudan, development will not come, people will lose hope and anything is possible," he said.
Kwaje said the presidency had set up a committee, with international observers, to demarcate the 1956 north-south border. He said the northern government since independence had moved the border gradually southwards to lay claim to oil and other important minerals found in the south.
An official in Khartoum declined to comment on the ministry's position on Heglig oilfield.
"Let the committee do its work then the experts will tell us," an oil ministry spokesperson told Reuters.
He added the southern government had also formed a committee to monitor daily the oil production in Sudan.
He said their information was that production was over 400 000 barrels per day (bpd). The northern oil minister says production is between 300 000-330 000 bpd.
Sudan's southern civil war broadly pitted Christian, animist rebels against Khartoum's Islamist government, complicated by issues of oil, ethnicity and ideology.
It forced more than 4-million people to flee their homes and devastated the infrastructure in the already poor south.
The Sudanese oil minister had said he expects production to increase by around 200 000 bpd by the end of the year, to more than 500 000 bpd.
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