Sudan’s new oil blocks opened for bidding

January 15, 2012 (KHARTOUM) – Sudan has opened six oil exploration blocks for bidding, attracting more than 150 foreign and local hopefuls.

“We are offering six blocks with very good potential,” the country’s minister of petroleum, Awad Ahmed Aljaz, said at a meeting with representatives of the companies in Khartoum on Sunday.

Sudan has lost nearly 75 percent of its previous daily output of 500,000 barrels of oil when South Sudan seceded in July last year to form an independent state.

Sudan’s oil-dependent economy has suffered since secession, leading the government to introduce austerity measures and devalue the local currency to stop its freefall against the dollar.

“We welcome all companies from all nationalities without any strings attached,” said Al-Jaz whose country currently produces 115,000 barrel per day but says it wants to increase production to 180,000.

Bid winners are expected to be announced in May.

Sudan’s announcement came on the same day in which it is due to resume talks with South Sudan to resolve their dispute over the transit fees the land-locked South should pay for use of Khartoum’s pipeline infrastructure to export its oil.

China, the biggest buyer of Sudan’s oil, has recently been awarded contracts to explore for oil in “three promising areas”, Sudan announced in August.

Sudan’s oil sector is subject to a number of uncertainties. The most productive oilfields left in Sudan after the south’s split lie in the country’s southern state of South Kordofan which has descended into a state of war since early June between the Sudan Armed Forces and fighters from the indigenous Nuba population who were previously aligned with the South Sudanese army during the country’s two-decade civil war.

(ST)