S. Sudan: Oil firm accuses security official of seizing 10 vehicles
March 27, 2012 (JUBA) — A Chinese and Malaysian owned Oil Company has accused a security manager deployed by South Sudan’s national security ministry to observe the company activities of confiscating company properties and threatening foreign managers.
Petrodar operating company (PDOC) in a March 18 letter to anti-corruption commission says the official, Kuol Mour Mour, allegedly confiscated 10 company vehicles, laptops, refrigerators and several office furniture, including unspecified amounts of money.
The security official is also accused of allegedly threatening Chinese and Malaysian mangers working at PDOC.
Asked why he forcefully took the vehicles, Mour, according to the letter, reportedly said he would share the vehicles with the company and the national security protection unit, which guards the oil fields.
Sources told Sudan Tribune that the oil company had earlier on issued a similar complaint to South Sudan’s vice-president, Riek Machar, who currently chairs the country’s oil management committee.
In the letter, a copy of which we obtained, PDOC further accuses its security manager of allegedly violating company procurement rules and procedures, without approval from management.
“Mr. Koul [Mour] has brought an airplane from Uganda to replace Nova Air, which the PDOC has been using. So, he has signed the contract with the Uganda Company without permission or to follow the company procurement rules. As a matter of fact, this is not his responsibility,” partly reads the letter, signed by South Sudanese employees at PDOC.
There was no independent confirmation from either the accused official or the national security ministry.
South Sudan last month expelled Petrodar’s president, Liu Yingcai, accusing him of not cooperating with the government and continuing to receive instructions from the government in Khartoum.
Stephen Dhieu Dau, the country’s petroleum and minister said some oil companies in South Sudan were not respecting the terms of reference of the memorandum of understanding, which they signed in December.
Currently, Petrodar holds concessions in Palloj in Upper Nile state, where South Sudan was producing over 60 percent of its crude oil before the shutdown.
The oil crisis is one of many raising fears of a return to war between the two countries. Decades of civil war, leading up to the 2005 peace deal that gave South Sudan the right to secede, left 2 million dead and over 4 million displaced, according to the UN.
(ST)
