Oil: Will Star Shine for South Sudan?

Oct 27, 2014 | Gurtong
View Original

South Sudan’s first post-independence oil deal is high-risk and in urgent need of further scrutiny, according to a new Global Witness report released today. The seven month investigation into the deal between the South Sudanese government and the Spanish-owned oil company Star Petroleum for two of the country’s last remaining oil blocks, uncovered that:

  the company is closely connected to a businessman convicted of a million euro fraud;

· no information about who owns Star Petroleum is available to the public. Instead the company’s shareholders are all other companies registered in tax havens or unknown jurisdictions;

· the company isn’t producing oil anywhere else in the world;

·  the deal is being negotiated behind closed doors, and through a loophole in the law, which means that Star has faced no competition from other companies in its negotiations for the concession.