Bombed Sudan oil pipeline active again - Talisman
KHARTOUM, May 3 (Reuters) - A Sudanese crude
oil pipeline blown up earlier this week would resume
operations on Wednesday, an official of the consortium that
owns the pipeline said.
Ralph Capeling, General Manager of the
Pipeline Division of the Greater Nile
Petroleum Operating Company (GNPOC),
told Reuters on Tuesday evening that repair
work on the 1,500 km (940 mile) pipeline
was almost complete.
"It did not have much impact, it is more of
an inconvenience rather than anything else,"
he said. "We placed a temporary valves
system to shut our flow."
Capeling, the Sudan representative of
Canada's Talisman Energy Inc which has a
25 percent stake in the pipeline, said some
of the spilled oil would be retrieved.
Sudan has said the Beja Congress, part of
the opposition National Democratic
Alliance (NDA), carried out Monday's
attack.
The government blamed ethnic Beja for an
attack on the pipeline in January. NDA
military forces carried out an earlier attack
two months after the pipeline came on line
in August.
Capeling said Talisman, Canada's biggest
oil and gas producer which has come under
fire from human rights for its involvement
in Sudan, would look into the needs of the
Beja people who live by the pipeline in
northeast Sudan.
"However, Sudan is a large country, with
many problems, we cannot solve all these
problems. We (Talisman) are concentrating
in the area where we have production
rights," he said.
The oil is pumped from the Heglig fields in
south Sudan where rebels have been
battling the northern Islamist government
for the past 17 years. Besides Talisman, the
consortium includes the state oil companies
of China, Malaysia and Sudan.
Capeling said the pipeline's current flow of
185,000 barrels per day (bpd) is expected
to reach 220,000 bpd in 2002, adding that
Talisman plans to increase the number of
pumps from six to 11, raising daily
capacity to at least 450,000 bpd from
150,000.
Talisman's Sudan output contributed to a
huge jump in first-quarter earnings
announced on Tuesday of $139.3 million,
up more than 5,000 percent from
year-earlier earnings.
Sudan previously spent about $360 million
a year on oil imports, swallowing almost
all its export earnings. It looks to the oil to
reverse economic decline. |
