Kenya and South Sudan sign pipeline agreement
Within days of reaching an agreement with hostile neighbor Khartoum, Sudan, over the fees on transporting South Sudan’s oil to Port Sudan for export - said to have been literally forced down South Sudan’s throat by western governments and subsequently the most expensive such deal ever, costing the South some US$12 billion over the lifespan of the 3-year agreement - South Sudan has reacted to provide for alternatives from 2015 onwards. In a deal announced today, they signed a major deal with Kenya, to build a 2,000-kilometer-long pipeline to the planned port of Lamu, where an oil export terminal will be constructed to facilitate the loading and shipping of crude oil.
South Sudan had earlier in the year halted oil production and exports completely, following the discovery that Khartoum, Sudan, had systematically stolen Southern oil on a large scale, only to claim it was their right in order to ‘recover’ fantasy charges demanded for the transit of the black gold.
When attaining independence, over 75 percent of the united Sudan’s' oil reserves went to the South Sudan, leaving Khartoum reeling from the sudden deficit of readily available cash used to pay for arms, ammunition, and to reward regime-friendly militias doing the dirty work for them and soon afterwards started a series of aerial bombings of the southern territory, eventually prompting a sharp reaction from the Juba government. It resulted in the brief ‘repatriation’ of Abyei, a state still awaiting their chance for an independence referendum, as are South Kordofan and Blue Nile states, where ethnic cleansing on a massive scale has taken place over the past year, perpetrated by the same methods used by the regime in Darfur and previously in the South when the Southern African population was still treated literally like ‘slaves’.
The announcement in Nairobi of the pipeline deal will go a long way to restore confidence in the South Sudan of a brighter future, while Kenya can now be assured that the South Sudan oil pipeline will become reality along the LAPSSET corridor, which will link Lamu port with Ethiopia and South Sudan by road, rail, and pipeline. Construction is expected to commence in early 2013, and completion of the project is hoped to take place before the present oil transit deal between South Sudan and Khartoum expires in 2015.
