Equitable sharing of oil revenues in Sudan, Is it Genuine?
By Peter Lokarlo Marsu
Nov 22, 2006 — A lot of political spadework undertaken jointly by South Sudanese, the SPLM together with the government of South Sudan has put forth strenuous pressure on the refractory NCP that finally softened Khartoum’s obdurate stance to consent to setting up of the Petroleum Commission that had fundamentally been characterised by wrangling and finger-pointing directed toward the NCP by the GOSS.
It makes unpresumptuous and trivial sense as to why it took so long for the National Congress Party of Omar Al Bashir to come to grips with the veracity of the CPA’s requirements, when the Sudanese President had consistently in the past turned down and resisted all along sensible and replicate calls to immediately ensure the proper operations of the Petroleum Commission. It remains to be seen whether this is a gesture of good will or a cog in the wheel of deception that Khartoum has been masterminding over the years to achieve its aim of buying more time whenever confronted by the moment of reckoning with the reality.
The Sudanese regime has engaged in a lucid and consistent pattern of dishonouring concluded agreements, it would hence be hard to acknowledge that the same Jallaba would be concerned fair-minded players when it comes to the implementation of the CPA agreement and particularly transparency in the oil question. The NCP is indubitably fretful with the pursuit of the London registered White Nile Company operating in South Sudan that has recently sent a massive wave of foreboding to the regime in Khartoum when it proclaimed the start of drilling of oil in block Ba in Jonglei State next year 2007. The NIF regime is convinced that the South is well on the unrestrained path to assert its Sovereignty given huge oil revenues to be generated from other wells in the region outside the NIF’s sphere of administrative control.
This scenario might have given the NIF rulers sufficient ground to contemplate and worry about their helpless circumstances and consequently the need for immediate maneuver to address the long relegated issue of the Petroleum Commission became handy so that Khartoum would manipulate and map its directions of business, to prevent South Sudan from producing oil in its own right. Such a whirlwind chase will never see the light of the day in its perspective. The government of South Sudan should exercise sagacity and supreme prudence in dealing with the NCP on the Petroleum Commission.
To date we have yet to see the Border and the Abyei Commissions at work to believe that authentic and positive inroads are being made into the country’s quagmire in line with the CPA recommendations. A close examination suggests that while some do view such conciliatory shift of the NCP’s policy architects as a welcome development, the majority of South Sudanese are not at all persuaded by such counterfeit projection and unrelenting hide-and-seek game of the Islamist party. Al Bashir must move swiftly to implement the CPA in its entirety, and refrain from undermining the articles of this important document written in blood of the marginalized constituencies of this black African country.
* The author is based in Australia. He can be reached at [email protected]