Total gears up for oil drill in South Sudan

Source: Monday Morning 

"They have now set up the base camp and they are mobilising facilities", John Luk, energy minister in semi-autonomous Southern Sudan, told reporters more than 20 years after Total froze oil exploration efforts because of civil war.
Jean-François Lassalle, Total's vice president of public affairs, exploration and production, said land had been identified around Bor, state capital of Jonglei, more than 1,000 kilometers south of Khartoum.

 

"The security and line-up of the new consortium still have to be sorted out", Lassalle said. Total has a small camp of prefab buildings in Juba, the capital of Southern Sudan, but still lacks drilling equipment, according to Lassalle.
He hopes exploration will begin before the end of the year and prays Total will strike black gold in the coming years.
Sudan is the third largest oil producer in Africa, producing half a million barrels a day, most of which is exported to China.
The world's fourth largest oil and gas company, Total is the only big Western energy player in Sudan, where the United States has imposed economic sanctions over the past 11 years.
In 1980, the French firm signed an exploration and production sharing agreement with Sudan for Block B -- the main Total exploration area of 118,000 square kilometers, half the size of the United Kingdom.
Sudan's devastating north-south civil war brought work to a standstill in 1984, forcing Total to suspend work just as the consortium was about to drill three oil wells.
In 1989, Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir seized power in an Islamist-backed coup that toppled the democratically elected government and ushered in a regime that once sheltered Ossama bin Laden.
Exxon and Shell left in 1990, leaving Sudan open to Chinese public consortium CNPC, Malaysian company Petronas and India's ONGC.
Business in Sudan has become a political liability in the West and the country has been on a US blacklist of "state sponsors of terrorism" since 1993.
After the North-South guns fell silent, the oil commission set up by Khartoum and southern ex-rebels now sharing national power, reconferred Total's rights in a 25-year contract of assorted obligations for durable development.
But the unclear future between the Arab north and non-Arab south -- despite the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) -- and the Darfur conflict complicates the Total deal.