South Sudan's leading oil company plans to pump as soon as possible
South Sudan’s biggest oil company Dar Petroleum pledged to kickstart production as soon as possible following last week’s deal on oil signed by Sudan and South Sudan.
Following the agreement signed by Sudanese and South Sudanese leaders on Thursday, Dar Petroleum pledged to increase production from 40,000 to 180,000 barrels of crude oil per day.
”Sometimes, we shall go beyond that,” Dar Petroleum production manager Wang Quan told staff members and government officials.
Oil production in South Sudan was halted at the start of the year over a spat with Sudan, where the pipeline infrastructure is located. Without the all-important oil income, the two nations have been financially crippled ever since. For South Sudan, oil accounts for more than 90 percent of earnings.
Quan said the company was poised to resume business as soon as they got the official green light.
Muhammad Benjamin Lino, the director general of the ministry of petroleum and mining, said oil resumption has not yet been officially announced by the president. Sun Xiansheng, president of Dar Petroleum, said it has not been easy for South Sudan economically and politically for the last eight months period of the oil shut down, but the company would restart production soon.
Dar Petroleum accounts for 80 percent of South Sudan’s oil revenue, giving it a role as “nation builder” in the recently independent country, Sun Xiansheng said.
As well as opening the door for a resumption of oil exports, the deal signed by South Sudanese President Salva Kiir and his Sudanese counterpart, Omar al-Bashir, resolved a number of financial and trade issues following days of closed-door talks in Addis Ababa.
These agreements, the United Nation’s Security Council said, represent a major breakthrough for the establishment of peace, stability and prosperity the neighbouring countries. It saw scope for “genuine” hope that both Sudanese and South Sudanese people would benefit from the deal.
However, there is no fixed timeframe for oil production to resume and experts say it will take at least three months to get business back on track.
DAR Petroleum is owned by five companies: CNP has a 41 percent share, Petronas owns 40 percent, NilePet has an eight percent share, SINOPEC has six percent while TRIO OCEAN owns the remaining five percent.
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- 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’.
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