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DMEA REFINING DMEA

South Sudan’s Nilepet outlines

development plans

SOUTH SUDAN SOUTH Sudan’s national oil company (NOC) in major towns in South Sudan, which is a very
Nilepet is looking to expand its domestic oper- ambitious plan because we need to have strategic
South Sudan’s national ations and become a vertically integrated firm. reserves. We want to extend our retail outlets to
oil company (NOC) According to James Yugusuk, the compa- all the major towns in South Sudan,” he stated.
Nilepet is looking to ny’s director-general for downstream activ- He went on to say that Nilepet was eager to
expand its domestic ities, Nilepet wants to be able to lead domestic expand training programmes for local workers.
operations and become upstream projects. “We want to have our own “We want to raise world-class South Sudanese
a vertically integrated block to operate,” he was quoted as saying by technical staff ... We also want to have a strong
firm. Africa Oil + Gas Report. footprint in the research and development pro-
The NOC is working “to build the capacity grammes,” he commented.
of our national staff such that between 2022 and Additionally, he said that the NOC wanted to
2027 we’ll become a standalone operator, able to establish alliances with international oil compa-
work up and develop hydrocarbon acreages by nies (IOCs) in the oilfield services sector. Nilepet
ourselves,” he added. has already taken steps in this direction by setting
Nilepet is making progress towards this goal up joint ventures such as SIPET, an engineering
via joint ventures such as Nile Delta, which is and construction firm, with China’s QDC, and
49% owned by Niger Delta Exploration and Pro- NIYAT, a road construction and maintenance
duction (NDEP) of Nigeria, he explained. The firm, with Eyat-Sudan, he said. It is also looking
venture was established to expand and commer- for a minority investor in the Nile Drilling com-
cialise natural gas production in South Sudan, he pany, he added.
noted. This is not Nilepet’s first expression of ambi-
Yugusuk did not say whether Nilepet was tar- tion. Managing director Chol Deng Thon Abel
geting any particular upstream projects, but he said recently that the company hoped to assume
did state that the NOC was also keen on down- control over domestic oilfields as contracts
stream oil refining and storage projects, as well as with various IOCs expired. The first assets to be
domestic petroleum product sales. “[We] want to handed over to Nilepet are likely to be the two
construct four refineries: one [each] in Bentiu, blocks held by Dar Petroleum Operating Co.
Paloch, Pagak and Thiangrial. All those are pro- (DPOC), whose contract is due to expire in 2027,
ducing blocks. We also want to construct depots he stated. ™

Week 40 08•October•2020 www. NEWSBASE .com P17