Sudan to start Nile Blend oil exports August 30
KHARTOUM, Aug 25 (Reuters) - Sudan will start exporting crude oil from its Red Sea terminal of Port Bashair on Monday August 30, a government newspaper reported on Wednesday.
Al-Anbaa quoted Hassan Eltom, secretary-general of the Energy and Mining Ministry, as saying Egyptian Oil Minister Hamdi el-Banbi, along with officials from Chad and Ethiopia, would attend the August 30 inauguration ceremony.
The Port Bashair oil terminal lies about 25 km (15 miles) south of Port Sudan, the country's main port, and about 1,200 km (750 miles) northeast of Khartoum. Al-Anbaa said the first tanker to sail from Port Bashair would be loaded with 600,000 barrels of crude pumped through a 1,610-km (1,000-mile) pipeline from Heglig in southwest Sudan.
The cargo was sold earlier this month to a major oil company for refining in Singapore, at a discount of 90 cents per barrel fob to Asian crude marker Minas. A second cargo, expected to load around September 10-15, was bought by a South Korean refinery at Minas -$1 fob.
President Omar Hassan al-Bashir inaugurated production at Heglig oilfield on May 30. Sudan is reported to have reserves of some 800 million barrels of oil in its Heglig and Unity fields.
Eltom said in May he expected exports to start at 120,000 barrels per day (bpd), rising to 150,000 bpd within a few weeks.
The pipeline has a capacity of 250,000 bpd, which could be increased to 450,000 bpd with additional pumping stations.
Traders Trafigura have been appointed official marketers for Sudan's Nile Blend crude for an initial six months, except for the 30 percent equity share owned by Malaysian state oil company Petronas, which will take care of its own marketing.
The other equity owners in the Greater Nile Petroleum Operating Company are the China National Petroleum Corp (40 percent), Talisman Energy Inc of Canada (25 percent), and Sudan's national petroleum company (five percent).
A week ago Sudanese rebel leader John Garang said his forces would try to halt Sudan's oil output and described foreign oil companies working in the country as ``accomplices to genocide.' ``The oilfields are legitimate targets,' he said in Oslo at the start of a tour of Nordic states. ``It is our responsibility to see that oil installations are shut down.'
More than 1.5 million people have died in Sudan through war and famine since 1983 when Garang's Sudan People's Liberation Army began a rebellion in the mainly Christian and animist south against government forces from the Arabised, Moslem north. |
