Southern Sudan's Unity State Expels Northern Oil Workers, Minister says
Southern Sudan’s oil-rich Unity state ordered the expulsion of all northern Sudanese workers from oilfields in the region over the Khartoum administration’s alleged support for southern militias, said Gideon Datpan, the state’s information minister.
After the directive was issued, 130 workers left the Unity field, Datpan said by phone today from the state capital, Bentiu. The order will remain in effect until Sudan’s president, Umar al-Bashir, halts his alleged support for “militias in the south,” he said. Al-Bashir’s government denies the allegations.
Southern Sudan, which voted to secede from Sudan in a referendum in January, accounts for 75 percent of Sudan’s daily oil production of 490,000 barrels. It is scheduled to be declared independent on July 9.
The northern and southern halves have not yet agreed on the status of the citizens residing in the two regions. This is the first expulsion order by either government.
The removal of the workers would be “a gross violation of the peace agreement,” Rabie Abdel Ati, senior member in al- Bashir’s National Congress Party and an adviser to the information minister, said today by phone from Khartoum, the capital. The 2005 accord ended a two-decade civil war between the mostly Muslim north and the south, where traditional religions and Christianity predominate.
The Unity and nearby Heglig fields, which is in northern- held territory and where the expelled workers were sent, are operated by the Greater Nile Petroleum Operating Co. and 40 percent owned by state-owned China National Petroleum Corp.
The northern workers are necessary to keep Unity state’s oilfields in operation, George Odyoro, Malaysia’s Petroliam Nasional Bhd’s liaison officer in the southern capital of Juba, said by phone today. The Malaysian company, known as Petronas, owns a 30 percent stake of Greater Nile.
“Production will stop, the whole thing will stop,” Odyoro said. “It will hurt both sides, both governments.”
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