Sudan Looking For More Oil Explorers
Panafrican News Agency
June 20, 2000
Khartoum, Sudan (PANA) - Sudan Monday announced that it was planning to
publicise three new areas for oil prospection.
The energy and mining ministry said the new areas are the Blue Nile Basin,
the extreme western Sudan near to the Chadian border and the Red Sea zone.
The ministry's under-secretary, Hassan Mohammed Ali el Toam, said propagation
for these areas will begin in July and that prospection concessions would be
granted before the end of the year.
"I believe the tenders will be completed before the end of the year," he said
in a statement.
According to the official, the ministry has received letters of interest from
European, Japanese and Mediterranean oil firms, which he did not name, to
prospect in those areas.
Toam said the ministry also expects bids from some Asian companies once the
tenders are called.
The ministry has conducted an initial survey in the White and Blue Nile
basins in central and northern Sudan.
Toam said that more geological data on those areas was being prepared.
Meanwhile, Toam has disclosed that an oil company, which he did not mention,
had won a contract to prospect for oil in blocs 3 and 7 around the town of
Rabak, on the White Nile, about 400 km south of Khartoum. The company will
start exploration by the end of the rain season in October.
Sudan started to export oil in August from its south-western Heglig field and
the nearby Unity field in southern Sudan.
The two fields produce 200,000 barrels of crude oil daily. A 1,160-km
pipeline to the exportation terminal of Bashair on the Red Sea transports the
crude. Most of the crude is sold in south- east Asia.
The pipeline was constructed by a consortium of firms from Sudan, China,
Malaysia and Canada.
Sudan's established oil reserve stands at three billion barrels in Heglig and
Unity fields, which were struck in 1982 by a US oil exploration company,
Chevron.
Exploitation of the reserves was held up by Sudan's long-running war in the
south of the country where Christians and are fighting for self-rule from the
Moslem-dominated north. |
