Sudan oil body to hear White Nile-Total row – official
Feb 13, 2006 (DUBAI) — The Sudanese oil dispute between French major Total SA (TOT) and U.K. minnow White Nile Ltd. (WNL.LN) will go before a new Sudanese authority tasked with charting the African state’s oil policy, a senior oil official said Monday.
Angelina Teny, state minister for energy and mining, said the dispute over rights to a huge tract of southern Sudan would be heard by the joint north-south committee, formed in the wake of the peace agreement signed last year that ended decades of civil war.
The National Petroleum Commission, of which Teny is a member, will also approve new oil contracts and formulate other policies, including environmental and social issues, she told a development conference in Dubai.
“It will settle any dispute,” she said.
The NPC, which has met twice to set by-laws and internal regulations, hopes to start actively formulating policy within a month, she said, without specifying when the commission would adjudicate on the White Nile/Total case.
White Nile says it has started shooting seismic data in Block Ba, a 65,000- square-kilometer tract of southern Sudan that forms part of the huge Block B claimed by Total.
Total and the central government in Khartoum say that, as an oil contract signed before the Jan 2005 comprehensive peace agreement, the French deal doesn’t fall within the remits of the NPC, saying it is meant to adjudicate on new contracts.
Teny said Sudan is currently producing 500,000 b/d, but the country will boost output to 650,000 b/d “soon” this year.
Sudan hopes to reach 1 million b/d output by the end of this year, the president has said.
(ST/Dow Jones)