Sudan to boost output by 33% in 2011

Eric Watkins
OGJ Oil Diplomacy Editor

LOS ANGELES, Aug. 19 -- Sudan’s Oil Minister Lual Deng said he expects the country to increase its oil output next year to 600,000 b/d, up from 450,000-470,000 b/d currently.

“For next year, all things being equal, we expect between 500,000 and 600,000 [b/d]. We are aiming at 650,000 [b/d],” Lual told a government-sponsored seminar on transparency in the country’s oil sector.

“It is the lack of transparency, or the perceived lack of transparency, that has fuelled mistrust between partners,” he said, referring to the split between northern and southern regions of the country.

“We hope to comfort all the Sudanese people that there will be transparency even if there was none in the past,” said Lual, who is from the former southern rebel Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM).

“We want to enhance trust between the north and south,” said Lual, aware of independent reports that the lack of transparency could destabilize the 2005 agreement that ended Sudan's civil war between north and south.

The accord, which was based on an agreement to share oil revenues, gives the south Sudanese the right to vote in January in a referendum on whether to remain part of Africa's largest country, or to become independent.

According to Lual, Sudan will publish daily production figures and conduct a full independent audit of the oil industry since 2005, which could help prevent future conflict over oil. The pledge aims to remove a source of contention ahead of the referendum.

“The audit is basically to look at the production since 2005—it will be done by an independent firm,” Lual said. “Our preference is to accelerate the process so that the results are made available before the referendum," he added.

Most of Sudan's estimated 6 billion bbl of oil reserves are in the south, but the north holds most of the country’s infrastructure, including its major pipelines, refineries and oil export terminal at Port Sudan on the Red Sea.

Last month, Lual said a proposed oil pipeline to Kenya from southern Sudan would be too expensive and existing pipeline systems that transport crude from southern oil fields through northern Sudan to the Red Sea would continue to be used (OGJ Online, July 16, 2010).

Contact Eric Watkins at [email protected].