Page 8 - AfrOil Week 09 2020

AfrOil PERFORMANCE AfrOil
South Sudan hopeful of reaching oil production target in 2020
SOUTH SUDAN
Salva Kiir Mayardit on one side and rebel leader Riek Machar Teny Dhurgon on the other.
The Petroleum Ministry acknowledged in a report published last month that the civil war had adversely affected the country’s oil sector. “Oilfield exploration and development work in South Sudan has been hampered since early 2014, [owing] to the security situation in the regions,” it said.
Officials in Juba are optimistic that the investment climate will improve now that Kiir and Machar have formed a unity government. They also hope to attract bids from international oil companies (IOCs) in a new licensing round that will be held later this month.™
SOUTH Sudan’s government is reportedly opti- mistic about its chances of reaching oil produc- tion targets this year, despite problems in the field.
The country is currently extracting around 185,000 barrels per day of crude, but it has said it hopes to see output levels average 200,000 bpd in 2020. Its efforts to do so have met with limited success, as many oilfields are reporting short- ages of water and inadequate electricity.
But according to Mayen Wol Jong, the under- secretary of South Sudan’s Ministry of Petro- leum, these problems can be overcome. “We are targeting reaching and maintaining 200,000 bpd most of this year, as we sort out some of those shortcomings,” he told S&P Global Platts last week. The government is working to sup- ply more water to the affected regions and also hopes to boost crude production by encour- aging the use of enhanced oil recovery (EOR) techniques, he said.
Conditions are also anticipated to improve following the completion of a new 100-MW power station near the capital city of Juba, he stated. The plant, which is due to be completed before the end of March, will supply electricity to the country’s oilfields, he explained.
According to other sources, the new facility will be a hybrid power plant with both solar and thermal generating facilities. It is being built by South Sudan’s Ministry of Energy and Dams and Ezra Power, a private company based in Juba.
South Sudan was producing about 350,000 bpd of crude in 2011, the year when it became an independent country. It extracted around 250,000 bpd in 2013, the last year before the out- break of civil war between backers of President
POLICY
Deputy President Riek Machar (L) and President Salva Kiir (R) / (Photo: UN)
Ghana sees tax dispute over sale of Anadarko assets to Total resolved soon
GHANA’S government has said it expects to resolve the tax dispute that has delayed efforts by Total (France) to buy assets owned by Occi- dental Petroleum (US) in the near future.
The assets in question include stakes in two offshore licence areas – a 27% participating
stake in Jubilee, the West African country’s largest oilfield, and a 19% participating stake
in Tweneboa-Enyenra-Ntomme (TEN). Both
were previously under the control of Anadarko Petroleum (US), which Occidental acquired last
year. 
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w w w . N E W S B A S E . c o m Week 09 04•March•2020