South Sudan oil output reaches 245,000 bpd

JUBA (Reuters) - South Sudan's daily oil production has increased to 245,000 barrels per day from 190,000 bpd in late October, its oil minister said.

Africa's youngest nation has been raising its crude output since April when it resumed production after halting exports in mid-2011 because of a row with Sudan over export pipeline transit fees, border security and territory.

"Current oil production has reached 245,000 barrels per day," South Sudan's Petroleum Minister Stephen Dhieu Dau said.

The minister, addressing an investment summit on Thursday in the South Sudanese capital, Juba, added feasibility studies had been completed on the construction of "a number of refineries".

South Sudan said in November it expected oil production would return within four or five months to the 300,000 bpd it had hit before the flow was shut down.

Oil exports from the land-locked south depends on a pipeline that runs north to a Sudanese terminal in Port Sudan.