Search results

Sudan has denied India’s ONGC Videsh and its partners an extension of licence to operate an oil block after the initial contract expired in November 2016, India’s Economic Times reported. ONGC Videsh had a 25% stake in the block alongside China National Petroleum Corporation and Malaysia’s Petronas.The Economic Times quoted a senior ONGC executive as saying the process of surrendering the block was under way. The government gave its notice to surrender after months of negotiations with the companies yielded no result.

President Omar Hassan Al-Bashir attended an inauguration ceremony in early February to mark the commissioning of the first of four 80MW units at the Upper Atbara and Setit dam complex. The Ministry of Water Resources, Irrigation and Electricity said the remaining units were scheduled to begin operation in April, June and August of this year. When fully commissioned, the 320MW plant will increase Sudan’s installed generating capacity by about 13%, according to the ministry.

In one of his final acts as US president, Barack Obama issued an Executive Order on 13 January authorising “expanded trade with and investment in Sudan”, as well as outlining a route to permanently revoke US sanctions on the country in July this year. Sudan’s economy is crumbling under the multiple burdens of sanctions, a falling oil price, and, crucially, the loss of oil reserves and production to the new state of South Sudan. The roadmap outlined by President Obama offers a slight hope of a reversal in the sluggish fortunes of a frontier oil sector occupied largely by minnows.

The state-owned Sudanese Thermal Power Generating Company signed an agreement with Germany’s Siemens on 1 December to supply five 172MW SGT5-2000E gas turbines. The units will be operational by the end of 2017.Siemens will also supply associated SGen5-100A generators and SPPA-T3000 control systems. Three of the units will be installed at the Garri III power station north of the capital, Khartoum, while the other two will be installed at Port Sudan on the country’s Red Sea coast.

Algeria’s Sonatrach has expressed interest in investing in oil and gas in Sudan. Ministry of Oil and Gas undersecretary Awad Al-Karim Mohamed Khair held a meeting at the ministry in Khartoum on 20 October with a visiting Algerian technical delegation and the Algerian ambassador to discuss the available investment opportunities. The ministers of the two countries recently met in Algeria to discuss opportunities. Technicians in the Algerian delegation were briefed on the opportunities available and the blocks available for investment, Sudan News Agency reported.

The 500MW Kosti oil-fired power plant was formally inaugurated by President Omar Hassan Al-Bashir on 5 February. India’s Bharat Heavy Electricals Ltd (BHEL) was the engineering, procurement and construction contractor for the facility, which comprises four 125MW units and commissioned in July 2015. BHEL recently commissioned the 28MW Nyabarongo hydroelectric power plant in Rwanda and a 40MW bagasse-fired steam turbine at the Tendaho sugar factory in Ethiopia.

The governments of Egypt, Ethiopia and Sudan signed an agreement in Khartoum on 29 December for French firms Artelia and BRL to study the potential impact of Ethiopia’s Grand Renaissance Dam on the flow of the Nile River. Technical studies are due to start in February, and will take 6-15 months to complete, according to Sudanese officials. The dam is already under construction by Italy’s Salini, but Ethiopia has said it will not divert any water from the Nile into the dam’s reservoir until the studies are complete.

Norway-based service company AGR has secured an agreement to deliver field development support for Nigerian explorer Misana Energy Resources. Misana is part of a consortium that was recently awarded a production-sharing contract for blocks 25 D & E in White Nile Province in the south of the country. The other consortium members are Sudapet with 70%, and Nigeria’s Express Petroleum with 15%. AGR’s technical support will cover all disciplines from asset evaluation to full field development and exploration services, the company said.

India’s Bharat Heavy Electricals Ltd (BHEL) has commissioned the 500MW Kosti thermal power station, comprising four 125MW units fuelled using crude oil imported from South Sudan. BHEL was the engineering, procurement and construction contractor, and designed, supplied and installed the entire plant with associated civil works. All major equipment was manufactured in-house by BHEL. Funding was provided via a $350m line of credit from the Export-Import Bank of India. The plant is BHEL’s largest oil-fuelled power plant outside India, and follows the inauguration of its 28MW Nyabarongo hydroelectric power plant in Rwanda and 40MW cogeneration facility at the Tendaho sugar factory in Ethiopia.

Egyptian president Abdel Fattah El-Sisi, Ethiopian prime minister Hailemariam Desalegn and Sudanese president Omar Hassan Al-Bashir on 23 March signed a declaration of principles intended to help resolve the longstanding dispute over the 6,000MW Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (Gerd). The ten principles, which were published in full on the Egyptian Ahram Online website, recognise the dam as a primarily hydroelectric facility and refer to areas such as compensation, fair and appropriate use of water resources and the filling and operation of the dam. Downstream countries Egypt and Sudan were granted priority access to electricity generated by the facility.

Sudan still has hopes of exploiting its gas reserves, put at 3tcf, but with demand for electricity and industrial feedstock rising, President Omar Hassan Al-Bashir on 30 November said the government planned a pipeline from Port Sudan to Khartoum to facilitate gas imports. Reports suggested that Sudan’s increasingly friendly ties with Qatar could open the way for liquefied natural gas imports, which were discussed during a November visit to Doha by defence minister Abdelrahim Mohammed Hussein. After a meeting with Emir Sheikh Tamim Bin Hamad Al-Thani, Hussein told reporters he had signed an “agreement to export gas from Qatar to Sudan for electricity production”, starting at the beginning of 2015.

ExxonMobil plans to withdraw from a consortium lined up to explore three oil blocks in South Sudan, according to sources in Juba. The blocks together make up Block B, a 118,000km2 area of Jonglei state divided into three in 2012.“I’ve heard that ExxonMobil have withdrawn from the Total consortium because of the difficulties they’re facing operating in the country,” said an oil industry source in Juba. “Their assessment is that the development of Block B will take forever and there’s so much uncertainty.”

On 17 February, opposition troops drove government forces out of the Upper Nile state capital Malakal, about 500km north of Juba near the border with Sudan. Malakal is less than 150km from major oil production facilities in the state, but output is continuing as normal, says the government. The main Upper Nile oil concession - Blocks 3 and 7 in the Melut Basin – is operated by Dar Petroleum Operating Company (DPOC), and includes the important fields of Adar, Yale, Fal and Paloich.

Under a peace agreement signed in Addis Ababa on 23 January, the government and dissident elements of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army have committed to ceasing “all military actions”, to “freeze their forces at the place they are in” and to “refrain from taking any actions that could lead to military confrontations”. They also agreed to cease propaganda campaigns against their opponents, pledged to protect civilians and allow for humanitarian access, and to comply with a monitoring and verification process to be implemented by the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD).

Reports that both the government of South Sudan and nominal opposition leader Riek Machar have been in talks with Khartoum over securing control of South Sudan’s oilfields have roused fears that the already bloody fight could escalate further. Speaking at Juba airport on 6 January at the conclusion of a visit by Sudan’s President Omar Al-Bashir, Sudan’s foreign minister Ali Ahmed Karti told reporters that the two countries were “in consultations” over a proposal from the South Sudanese government for the deployment of a “mixed force to protect oilfields in South Sudan”.