By George Wachira

In 1983, when Shell and Chevron announced discovery of crude oil somewhere in the southern part of Sudan, civil disturbances in the region followed the news.

This discovery coincided with the beginning of the second civil war in Sudan.

As the civil war spread, the two multinationals plugged the wells and disappeared from the scene, citing insecurity.

Later, Tiny Rowland of Lonrho acquired the abandoned oil fields, but sold them off to Canadian interests who sold the same to the current operators from Asia (China, Malaysia, and India).

Two multinational oil companies, Total of France and Marathon of USA managed to keep their undeveloped oil exploration blocks allotted to them in the 1980s.

These blocks located in the southeastern part of South Sudan will now form the foundation for western world participation in oil exploration and development in South Sudan post independence.

Marathon is understood to have sold their interests to Total a few years ago.

Sudan was for many years a “don’t touch” country for oil activity because of the civil war, economic sanctions imposed by the Clinton administration in the 1990s, and in the early 2000 the boycotts related to the Darfur crisis.

It is only after the cessation of hostilities that oil discoveries started, with accelerated investments by Asia after the signing of the CPA in 2005 leading to the current 490 thousand barrels per day oil production.

If the second civil war in Sudan had not broken up in 1983, perhaps Sudan would be among the leading oil producers in Africa today.

Currently, Sudan is the sixth largest producer of oil in Africa after Nigeria, Algeria, Angola, Libya and Egypt in that order.

Post separation, which now appears a sealed destiny; the leaderships of the North and the South have no choice, but to economically co-operate to achieve the mutual interest of monetising the current oil production of which about 80 per cent comes from the South.

In the next one decade, Southern Sudan will critically need the North oil exports infrastructure to move out their exports, and the North will need to make money from their existing oil export infrastructure.

The two separated countries will therefore need to make deliberate efforts to ensure that security and political stability are maintained in both countries.

Failure to achieve this objective will result in mutual economic self destruction.