[div class="excerpt"]
Sudan: South Expects New Oil Finds to Boost Its Economy

Khartoum — South Sudan government expects that new oil finds in the region by European operators would increase its revenue and help to cover important expenditures for the new state which might proclaim its independence next July.

The semi-autonomous region is conducting nowadays a referendum on self-determination which would lead to the establishment of a new African state devoid of infrastructure and ravaged by war.

The French oil company Total SA (TOT) and Spanish Star Petroleum will start oil exploration next March in two blocks located in Jonglei state, the southern Sudan oil minister said.

"One is Bloc B, the biggest in southern Sudan, to Total. They will start exploration in March. And another bloc is Bloc E with Star Petroleum, a Spanish company," said minister Garang Diing to the Agence France Presse.

"We estimate that these two blocs have huge reserves which could allow us to add three times the current production to reach maybe two million bpd around 2014 to 2015."

The minister estimated the South produces 450,000 barrel per day.

In 1983, Total had to interrupt its activities in the Bor Basin Block B acreage where they operate with Kuwaiti and American funds. After the 2005 peace agreement, the French firm had to prove its rights and defend its concession as a UK company White Nile (WNK.LN), started working on the ground with the support of Juba.

However in July 2007, the national oil commission stated in favor of Total, but the latter was not ready to start as its American partner the Marathon Oil Corp. (MRO) had been forced to withdraw from the project due to the economic sanctions imposed on Sudan in 1997.

An Emirati investor Mubadala company showed interest, but nothing materialized as Juba wanted, at the time, to involve a Spanish company, Star Petroleum in the consortium but Total was reluctant to associate its self with the Iranian owner of the latter.

Now, Qatar Petroleum Company is suggested by the French firm but Juba didn't give its approval for the 20% percent stake.

Total has operating rights for the block with a 32.5 percent stake, Kuwaiti Kufpec Sudan Ltd 27.5 percent and state-owned Sudapet has 10 percent, the southern Sudan government owned Nilepet 10%. After the southern Sudan independence Nilepet or the structure that should be created will get 20 percent.

Total expressed readiness to resume activities once the new state had confirmed its rights. However a spokesperson from the French company added that some outstanding problems needed to be settled first.

"There are some preconditions, which are security guarantees for the operations on the ground, as well as the enforcement of our standards in environmental matters, ethical behaviour and transparency, and the reorganisation of the consortium following Marathon's voluntary withdrawal."

Last July, Sudanese oil minister Lual Deng Lual in an interview with Sudan Tribune disclosed that local communities ask for compensations, services "etc to the extent that these moves lead to either shelving some expansion plans or worse production stoppage".

Oil minister Diing said they want Total brings new standards and knowhow to the oil sector in South Sudan dominated by Asian companies accused of not observing environment and security norms.

"We need to diversify the capital from some Asian - China, Malaysia and India - especially to get Western experience, the best technologies and the best practices," the minister said.

Diing also expressed hopes that a big find by Total would also help the south to reduce its dependence on the north - its sole existing pipeline goes to Port Sudan.

"We have that thinking that Bloc B is very far from the pipeline. If there is a big discovery, we might need another pipeline to east Africa," he said, adding that that could go to Lamu on the Kenyan coast or to Uganda, where Total has existing operations.

"We should have options ... This is an issue taken seriously by the authorities," Diing said.

Minister Lual who professed a rare support for the unity of Sudan, was not favorable to the idea of a new pipeline saying it was "uneconomical and expensive". The cost of the pipeline project is estimated at $1.5 billion.

http://allafrica.com/stories/201101140242.html [/quote]

Filed under 'who could imagine....'

now I know.

with the discovery of oil is the realization that the wildlife will be displaced one way or another. Fucking capitalism.

http://media.npr.org/assets/news/2009/10/05/sudan02_wide.jpg?t=1254777130&s=4

Southern Sudan: Oil Exploitation vs Wildlife Protection
Dec 10th, 2009

To the surprise of researchers, wildlife remains plentiful in southern Sudans Boma National Park, despite a long civil war, which ended in 2005. Here, a herd of elephants move through a grassland in the park. (Miguel Juarez for NPR)

To the surprise of researchers, wildlife remains plentiful in southern Sudan's Boma National Park, despite a long civil war, which ended in 2005. Here, a herd of elephants move through a grassland in the park. (Miguel Juarez for NPR)

[Montréal, Québec, Canada -2°C] Before the last civil war started in Sudan in 1983, the country’s protected areas, according to the Wildlife Conservaton Society, “supported some of the most spectacular and important wildlife populations in Africa, and hosted the second largest wildlife migration in the world.� According to their website, “During an aerial survey, more than 1.3 million white-eared kob, tiang (African antelope), and mongalla gazelle are thriving in Southern Sudan.� And apparently, an estimated 8,000 elephants are located within the Jonglei region and particularly in Boma National Park.

This seems like such good news considering that all other information coming from Sudan is about war crimes in Darfur, tribal conflict, a fragile peace agreement and upcoming elections which may or may not be fair and free.

Sudan’s central and southern governments are over-dependent on oil for their respective revenues. Considering most of the developed oil fields straddle the as-yet-undemarkated border that situates the south, oil will play an important role in the country’s ability to hold on to the Comprehensive Peace Agreement and avoid a third civil war.

Within the volatile political context that is Sudan, there has been little to no reporting on the country’s natural environment and the potential for wildlife reserves and national parks to become an important source of revenue for the South. Tanzania’s revenues from safari tourism is their second largest source of foreign currency after agricultural exports. And it is steadily growing.

The south is now seriously underdeveloped and lacking in general infrastructure and its primary foreing trade is done in oil, which is managed by the Central govenrment in Khartoum who shares the revenues with the government of Southern Sudan. The South has other exports like gum Africa to gain some foreign currency for its own development but it needs more revenue streams and with greater dieversity.

Of course it will take a while to develop the infrastructure for safari tourism but the southeastern region of Southern Sudan seems apt to offer an important future source of revenue that can rival oil exports.

Considering that wildlife tourism could be added to the important oil export to earn foreign capital, the region’s national parks and wildlife reserves could provide a genuine revenue stream for Southern Sudan’s economy that would diminish oil dependence.

How will an oil economy adapt to an emerging wildlife conservation economy? ....

Continues here: http://burningbillboard.org/2009/12/southern-sudan-oil-exploitation-vs-wildlife-protection/

I am taking bets now...

The problem here is that it assumes that well heeled foreigners will make conservation a paying proposition able to compete with the oil industry, that alone is pretty iffy. But getting to the meat of it, this is a sorry way to justify wildlife conservation. Practically, that wildlife would be held hostage to capitalism and class, if the economy goes into the shitter and the upper middle class feels it cannot travel then the whole project is moot. We might ask how jetting well heeled folks thousands of miles and proving their creature comforts benefits wildlife or how that traffic contributes to climate change. More to the point, is this why we preserve biodiversity? If so, it is nothing but a bourgeois affectation and unworthy of consideration. But the planners at the inception of the Soviet Union had excellent conservation plans and reasons for those plans before non-stop crisis push them to the side. We do this because all of this Earth is humanity's patrimony(is there a non-paternalistic term?). If lost it cannot be remade, and regardless of whether the 'value' in these things for us is the genes, 'environmental services', aesthetic or mebbe even psychic, it should be preserved for future generations. Just as farmland should traverse the generations in as good or better shape so should the rest of our natural patrimony.

... into sheep runs - transforming at the same time 4 out of 5 small farmers, free or otherwise, into vagrants - the English then transformed the sheep runs into deer parks. The parks, of course, had few trees... but that suited them to the hunting "skills" of the newly idle upper classes of British Society.

Thus, eco-tourism was born...

during the campaign. Know what is happening with those bears now that global warming is melting the Arctic Ice Cap? They are moving into Grizzly Bear territories and mating with them. Eventually the species will be extinct.

http://www.terradaily.com/reports/Inter-species_mating_could_doom_polar_bear_experts_999.html

It is thought they were derived from the brown bear complex relatively recently.

Too, too bad. The Sami call them 'God's Dogs', and they might well as be. We shall be diminished.

though the Browns are magnificent unto themselves...had a personal meeting with one on Kokiak...gorgeous and terrifying...

Loss of too much is diminishing us to a point that I'm glad I'm not young...selfish of me, I know, but it also gets my blood moving to want to stop this for those who are young...