Total in talks to regain acreage in South Sudan oil block

JUBA (Reuters) - French oil major Total SA hopes to secure at least two thirds of a massive oil block in South Sudan, which it held the rights to before it was split up to entice other firms.

Officials in Juba said in September they would divide the group's 120,000-square-km concession, known as Block B, into three parts to speed up exploration in the area.

Total had held the entire concession since 1980, but decades of civil war prevented exploration. Company officials told Reuters a deal could be signed this year.

"We will manage, if possible, to get the whole block. If there is a tender we will tender for the third block. But today, we can get two (thirds)," Antonin Fotso, Total's head of exploration and production in South Sudan, told Reuters.

South Sudan's Minister of Petroleum, Mining and Industry Stephen Dhieu Dau confirmed talks were underway.

"The government restructured the block, there is now Block B1, B2 and B3, and we considered that Total with other partners ExxonMobil and Kufpec, to continue, if we agree on the new terms, to operate on B1 and B2," he told Reuters.

The government plans to invite bids for B3 and Total said it would submit a bid once tendering starts.

Total's partners in the block are Kuwaiti company Kufpec and South Sudan's Nile Petroleum.

Exxon Mobil was also likely to join the venture but its participation has not yet been confirmed, Fotso said.

Exxon Mobil spokesman Patrick McGinn declined to comment specifically on the block but said the company always evaluates exploration opportunities around the world.

Total will use a technology known as "Airborne Gravity Gradiometry", which uses a plane to survey the gravitational pull of the earth to explore the block once a deal is signed, a first for South Sudan, he said.

South Sudan seceded from Sudan in July 2011, and later renegotiated contracts with active oil firms without making major changes.

Block B lies mostly in the eastern Jonglei state, a region marred by tribal fighting and militias, but Fotso said Total would still explore in the area once a deal is reached.