South Sudan Oil: A Curse or a Blessing

Dec 31, 2016 | Isaac Yak R. Tutdel
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The Petroleum Industry in South Sudan (PISS) was inherited from the continuing Sudan and sustains long historical records. South Sudan is endowed with significant non-renewable natural resources that would have an enormous positive transformational impact on the South Sudanese communities if polices to exploit them were for the benefits of such communities. These non-renewable natural resources comprise oil as the leading resource, uranium, copper, diamonds, gold, iron ore, mica, silver, zinc, and others.

Although a sizeable reserve of these minerals has been proven to exist, a comprehensive exploration has not been conceded to and undertaken throughout the country due to protracted political conflicts between the North and the South that predate Sudan’s independence in 1956. The Addis Ababa Peace Agreement of 1972, which ended the first Sudanese civil war between the Southern Sudan and the Khartoum government, made it possible for oil companies to explore oil in the South of the country. The American oil company Chevron made the first discovery of oil the in the late 1970s and 1980s in greater Upper Nile Region. However, Chevron could not continue with the exploration and production because of the outbreak out of Sudan second civil war in 1983.