South Sudan Targets Doubling Oil Output in 2018, First Refining

SOUTH SUDAN (Capital Markets in Africa) – South Sudan targets more than doubling oil production to 280,000 barrels per day next year as it restarts output that was suspended at some fields because of an almost four-year civil war.

The government is seeking to restore production to about 150,000 barrels per day by the end of 2017, from 130,000 barrels, Petroleum Minister Ezekiel Lul Gatkuoth told an energy industry conference in the capital, Juba, on Wednesday. He said the country will begin its first refining by 2020 and handle 120,000 barrels of crude a day.

South Sudan, which has sub-Saharan Africa’s third-biggest oil reserves, was producing about 350,000 barrels per day in 2011, when it seceded from Sudan. Disputes with its former ruler over transit fees and then the outbreak of war in December 2013 has cut output of crude, the East African nation’s only major source of revenue, spurring an economic crisis.

South Sudan is inviting more companies to invest in the oil industry and will sign an agreement with a foreign firm to explore block E2 by the end of October, Gatkuoth said. The country is also in talks with Uganda and Kenya about new routes to ship its oil, which is currently exported via pipelines through Sudan to a port on the Red Sea, he said.

Source: Bloomberg Business News