SUDAN’S NEW 1460-km long oil pipeline pumping crude from the southern Upper Nile region to the Red Sea was inaugurated in mid-April. The country’s oil output was set to rise to half a million barrels per day (bpd) after the pipeline began operation, allowing oil wells to start operating in the southern Melut Basin from which the crude will be pumped to Al-Salam port on the Red Sea. Sudan’s 300,000brl/d production will rise above the 500,000brl/d, making Africa’s largest country one of the continent’s top oil producers, behind Libya, Nigeria, and Angola. The launch ceremony for the pipeline – initially due to have taken place last summer – was held in the town of Fulouj and attended by Energy and Mining Minister Awad al-Jaz as well as several southern Sudanese officials. Sudan’s north and south signed a peace agreement in January, 2005, ending 21 years of war fuelled by resentment over the northern Khartoum-based government’s exploitation of oil resources, which are mainly in the south. A wealth-sharing agreement was among the hardest to reach during the negotiations for the comprehensive peace deal, and sharp differences remain between Khartoum and the semi-autonomous southern government. The new pipeline is run by the Petrodar conglomerate, three quarters of whose shares are owned by the two oil giants operating in Sudan: Malaysia’s Petronas and China’s CNPC. The rest of the shares are split between Sudan’s Sudapet, Dubai’s Gulf Petroleum and Al-Thani, and Sinopec, China’s other state-owned giant. China, the world’s second largest energy consumer market after the United States, has its largest overseas oil production operation in Sudan, and is reported to be considering more deals as the war-torn country’s oil sector picks up. Some Sudanese oil officials have said in recent weeks that they hope to further hike total output to 650,000brl/d by the end of the year, and have announced a target of more than 1.1m brl/d by 2010. The country has proven reserves of 563m brl of oil, with potential for more in southern regions which had been made inaccessible by conflict. Natural gas has also been discovered offshore.