A nyone in the oil and gas industry who thought that Sudanese President Omar Al–Bashir would soon be out of the picture may want to think again.
Last week, Al–Bashir underscored his role in Sudan by announcing that the country’s reserves stand at 150 million bbl and that its average production is 500,000 b/d.
At the opening session of the new parliament, Al–Bashir said work has been finalized in Nargath oil field, which “will produce some 60,000 b/d” and that production in the Fula basin will hit “more than 40,000 b/d.”
Not least, Al–Bashir—whose arrest is sought by the International Criminal Court (ICC) over alleged abuse in Sudan’s Western Darfur region—spoke of a plan to upgrade the 100,000–b/d refinery at Khartoum.
Such statements don’t suggest any overt fears on the part of the Sudanese leader who just last week received a warm welcome from his Ethiopian hosts on his arrival in Addis Ababa for his 2–day official visit.
The welcome mat
While no Western diplomats showed up to greet him, Al–Bashir was welcomed by Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi and many other African diplomats at Bole International Airport.
Not least, ambassadors from China, Venezuela, Cuba, and North Korea also joined their African counterparts at BIA to welcome him.
During a joint press conference with Meles, Al–Bashir dismissed the notion that the ICC arrest warrant would have any effect on his rule or his plans to travel.
“We came to this meeting to show those who said we could not travel outside Sudan that we can travel outside Sudan,” said Al–Bashir who, in addition to Ethiopia, has visited Egypt, Eritrea, Libya, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia since the ICC issued its arrest warrant on Mar. 4.
Chinese plans
Nor has the arrest warrant slowed plans by the Chinese to exploit Sudan’s oil to the fullest. In fact, China National Petroleum Corp. recently announced that its Dalian Petrochemical processed 40,000 tonnes of high–acid oil imported from Sudan in March.
In a bid to reduce production cost, according to Chinese press reports, Dalian successfully blended Sudan’s “cheap, low–quality, acid crude” with normal crude to “pave the way for upcoming large–scale processing.”
With such large–scale production in mind, CNPC subsidiary PetroChina is building a 10 million tonne/year refinery in southern China’s Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region, which is designed to do nothing but process Sudanese high–acid crude.
The restructuring and expansion project of PetroChina’s Jilin Petrochemical’s 10 million tpy refinery has begun, with operations at the catalyzing and cracking facility to be under way by mid–2010.
Such plans would not be possible without the approval of Al–Bashir, and the Chinese know it—as do others. While ICC may want to arrest him, the chief buyers of Sudanese crude will do their all to make sure that does not happen.
