Sudan: the rebels are getting desperate, they have failed to stop the oil production, what to do? There's only one war left to intensify: the propaganda war.
Sudanese Rebels Plan to Intensify War Around Oil Fields
NAIROBI, June 6 (AP) - A day after Sudan announced its first export of refined oil products, southern rebels said Tuesday they would intensify the civil war around oil fields to stop further shipments.
Samson L. Kwaje, a spokesman for the Sudan Peoples' Liberation Army in Kenya, said the rebels ''will intensify military activities around the oil fields with the intention to stop the exploitation and utilization of this valuable resource while the war is still on.''
He said President Hassan el-Bashir's government needs the oil revenue to finance its 17-year war against the southern third of Africa's largest nation.
The official Sudanese newspaper Al-Anbaa reported Monday in Khartoum that Sudan exported some 20,000 tons of gasoline to Malta on a Turkish tanker that left Port Sudan on the Red Sea on Monday.
The paper quoted Energy and Mining Minister Awad el-Jazz as saying the government plans to expand its gasoline exports to some 600,000 tons annually.
Sudan started producing oil last year at a rate of 150,000 barrels a day and has since increased the output to 160,000 barrels.
The 1,610 kilometer (1,810-mile) pipeline that carries the crude oil from southern oil fields to a refinery in Port Sudan has come under rebel attack several times.
The rebels have repeatedly warned foreign companies against investing in Sudan's oil industry, and the southerners always opposed the construction of a refinery in the north.
Christian and animist rebels have been fighting for autonomy for southern Sudan from the Muslim-dominated government in the north since 1983. Nearly 2 million people have died in fighting and related famine since the war began.
slb.com
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Fighting forces Sudan to close six oil wells: rebels
CAIRO, June 6 (AFP) - An upsurge of fighting has forced the
Sudanese government to stop work at six key oil wells in the south
west of the country, the main rebel group, the Sudan People's
Liberation Army (SPLA) said Tuesday.
"After the fighting by the SPLA in April and May in the Upper
Nile region, during which 600 government troops were killed, the
Khartoum regime was forced on Monday to order work to stop at six
oil wells in the Hegleig region," said SPLA spokesman Yasser Erman
in a statement received by AFP here.
"The government army decided to halt operations at these wells
because it no longer had sufficient manpower to ensure security
there," the statement said.
"The closure of these six wells is the beginning of the end of
the squandering of Sudan's economic resources by the regime in
Khartoum, which uses Sudan's wealth to continue the war," it added.
The Sudanese government on Saturday denied a claim by the SPLA
that it had launched attacks on government forces in the area.
"There is no presence of the rebel forces that jeopardises the
petroleum operations in those areas," government army spokesman
Mohammed Osman Yassin told reporters.
Sudan became an oil exporter in August 1999, via a pipeline
linking Higleig to the terminal at Beshair on the Red Sea, and has
been exporting some 20,000 barrels per day of crude oil since last
October.
The oil exports helped move the country's trade balance from
deficit to surplus in the first quarter of 2000 compared with the
same period the previous year, a finance ministry report said in
May.
The SPLA has often said it regards the oil facilities as
legitimate targets because it claims the government uses the revenue
to finance the civil war which western experts estimate costs one
million dollars a day.
The war, pitting the mainly Arab and Muslim north against the
largely Christian or animist south, has raged since 1983. |
