Israel Matzav

South Sudan signs oil deal with Israel

South Sudan says it has signed an agreement with several Israeli oil companies, a potentially significant strategic move that will consolidate the Jewish state's relations with the fledgling, oil-rich East African state.

It will also bolster Israeli moves to counter Iranian inroads into the Red Sea and a major gunrunning route from the Revolutionary Guards base at Bandar Abbas in the Persian Gulf to the Gaza Strip via Sudan.

South Sudan, which became independent of Arab-ruled Sudan in July 2011 after a decades-long civil war, is locked in a frequently violent confrontation over its oil reserves with the military-run Khartoum regime, an ally of Iran, under President Omar al-Bashir.

Sudan has become a battleground in the mostly clandestine war between Israel and the Islamic Republic, which funnels missiles and other arms for Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip through the Red Sea.

South Sudan's petroleum and mining minister, Dhieu Dau, announced the oil deal last week after he returned from a visit to Israel.

He said negotiations were ongoing with Israeli companies, which he did not identify, seeking to invest in South Sudan.

South Sudan sits on around 80 percent of Sudan oil reserves, which total 6.6 billion barrels, according to the BP Statistical Review.

This gives the south, which is overwhelmingly Christian and animist, immense economic leverage over the Muslim Arab regime in Khartoum, which depended on oil revenues to prop up its economy.

But Khartoum controls the only export pipelines from the landlocked south that run through the north to Port Sudan on the Red Sea.

Most of the oil fields lie along the border between the two parts of Sudan, and there have been repeated military clashes as both sides seek control of the reserves.

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There has been talk of building a 1,000-mile export pipeline from South Sudan across Kenya to the Indian Ocean that would free Juba from reliance on Khartoum's pipelines.

But no definite plans for the project, expected to cost around $2 billion, have yet materialized.
It may be that Israeli companies are seeking to help out in that regard -- if only to undermine the Islamic-oriented Khartoum regime and its alliance with Tehran, and to gain access to the Nile River, Egypt's primary source of water and a strategic target.

Labels: oil, South Sudan

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 12:20 PM