The government of South Sudan has commenced plans to take full control of the world’s youngest country’s oil sector by introducing a training facility and controlling data storage.
In a petroleum report launched on Tuesday, 22nd December 2020, that covers from June 2016 to May 2020, the Petroleum Minister, Puot Kang Chol, said that the training facility will help to equip South Sudanese ahead of when the government plans to phase out foreign investors from the oil sector, which is in 2027.
He said the facility will be launched in 2021 and the government is also completing the building of a data centre to manage its data on oil operations.
Chol said, “We are working on establishing a training facility – a petroleum training centre for the republic of South Sudan where we will be training young men and young women of the Republic of South Sudan, preparing them to take over from our partners when the time is ripe for us to do so.”
“Our data is managed from Khartoum. With support from our partners, we are now at the last stage of building a data center in the Republic of South Sudan.”
“The aim is for us to move our data from Sudan so that we manage it ourselves.”
The Undersecretary of the Ministry of Petroleum, Daniel Awow Chuang, said that the report is important for information sharing.
He said, “The launch is about oil production, cost of production, and fiscal regime that we have,” said Chuang. “What we have published today is going to help us in managing the oil sector and especially when we are trying to comply with our laws.”
The coronavirus pandemic has dealt a blow on the oil industry of South Sudan in 2020 as it has disrupted logistics and supplies. The low oil prices have severely affected the country’s economy. The daily production rate is 170,000 – 172,000 barrels compared to the projected total of 190,000 for the year.
