JUBA (Reuters) -Sudan has lifted a nearly year-long force majeure on the transport of crude oil from its neighbour South Sudan to a port on the Red Sea after security conditions improved, according to a letter seen by Reuters on Monday.
Khartoum declared force majeure in March last year after the main pipeline carrying oil from South Sudan through Sudan for export suffered stoppages linked to the war between Sudan’s army and the insurgent Rapid Support Forces (RSF).
In the letter, dated Jan. 4, from Sudan’s Ministry of Energy and Petroleum to South Sudan’s energy minister, Khartoum said it was lifting the force majeure based on new security arrangements it had reached with Juba and BAPCO, the Sudanese company that runs the pipeline, to ensure safe flow of oil.
“We are hereby lifting the force majeure,” Sudan’s minister of energy and petroleum, Mohiedienn Naiem Mohamed Saied, wrote to South Sudan’s minister of petroleum, Puot Kang Chol.
An official from Sudan’s energy ministry confirmed the letter was authentic.
The Petrodar pipeline, set up by a consortium including China’s CNPC and Sinopec as well as Malaysia’s Petronas, runs more than 1,500 km (932 miles) from the Melut Basin in South Sudan’s Upper Nile state to Port Sudan on Sudan’s Red Sea coast.
Another pipeline carries oil from South Sudan’s Unity state to Port Sudan.
Last month, South Sudan’s Ministry of Petroleum contacted traders to participate in a tender held on Dec. 13, offering crude cargoes delivered in January, according to an email seen by Reuters.
South Sudan had been pumping about 150,000 barrels per day of crude through Sudan for export, under a formula established when South Sudan gained independence from Khartoum in 2011.
Sudan erupted into a civil conflict in April 2023 and the fighting has unleashed waves of ethnic violence and created world’s largest internal displacement crisis.
(Reporting by Waakhe Simon Wudu; Additional Reporting by Khalid Abdelaziz in Dubai and Anna Hirtenstein in London; Writing by Elias Biryabarema; Editing by Louise Heavens and Alex Richardson)
