18 July 2013, News Wires – South Sudan is once again shutting in all of its production, this time reportedly at the instigation of neighbour and uneasy trading partner Sudan.
Total production from the former to the latter has already been slashed from 200,000 barrels per day of oil to 160,000 bpd, Reuters reported on Thursday.
“The reduction started yesterday,” Foreign Affairs spokesman Mawien Makol Arik told the news wire.
“It is going to go down gradually until it goes off,” he continued. “This is a decision made by Khartoum … still accusing us of supporting rebels, which is a position we denied. We said we don’t do that.”
It is unclear how long it will take to halt production or for how long the measure will be in place.
Sudan and South Sudan have been at almost continuous loggerheads ever since the latter split from the former in July 2011 to become the world’s newest country. South Sudan took with it around three quarters of the total reserves of the once unified nation.
The Juba administration has in the past shut off all production as it accused Sudan of stealing its oil which it has to send via Sudan’s pipeline infrastructure to ports on the Red Sea as it has no infrastructure of its own.
Plans are in motion, however, for the construction of two pipelines through neighbouring countries to take oil from South Sudanese oilfields to international markets via Kenyan ports.
– Upstream.
