South Sudan to resume oil production, export within 3 weeks

PanARMENIAN.Net - South Sudan will be able to resume oil production within three weeks and export no more than a week after that, the oil minister said on Tuesday, March 12 after the country reached deals on border security with Sudan on Friday, Reuters reported.

Landlocked South Sudan, which seceded from Sudan in July 2011, closed off its 350,000 barrel-per-day output in January last year in a dispute with Khartoum over how much it should pay to send the oil through Sudanese pipelines to the Red Sea.

Both countries depend heavily on oil for the foreign currency they need to import food and fuel, but disputes over the border and other issues left over from partition have prevented them resuming exports.

Sudan's chief negotiator, Idris Mohammed Abdel Gadir, signed a deal with his South Sudanese counterpart Pagan Amum in the early hours of Tuesday setting out a timeline for the resumption of oil exports after four days of African Union-brokered talks in Addis Ababa.

Former South African president Thabo Mbeki, who has been mediating between the two sides, told reporters they had agreed to order oil companies to restart production within two weeks of "D-Day", given as Sunday, March 10.