By Mary Poni
Oil and Gas consultancy companies in South Sudan have called for more international investors to invest in the Country’s remaining fourteen virgin oil blocks ready for grabs by drilling and extracting companies.
The consultancy companies during a penal discussion at the 2nd South Sudan oil and power conference advertised the country’s 14 virgin oil blocks stilled not tapped, opened for potential investors to grab the opportunity.
The managing director for Petro-Tec, Omar Abu-Elbashar who was part of the panel said there are companies including Petro-Tec being contracted by the Ministry of Petroleum of South Sudan in order to study G&G evaluation of the blocks.
He said the blocks were divided into 14 in corporation with the technical team of the ministry of petroleum and agreed on the terms and conditions to approach the international companies such that they promote the blocks.
Abu-Elbashar stated that all the technical information is being put into the technical data with the ministry to know that the company has been doing it.
“We have consulted our immediate company working in the United Kingdom (UK) to upload all the data of South Sudan into the website such that the international companies will get interest in the blocks and the kind of approach to the company to get the data from around the globe,” said Omar.
“We managed to get 34 companies interested to work at the data of this country and out of those, 7 companies are already building 45 finished blocks in the UK,” he stated.
He noted that if the people of South Sudan approach the international arenas in the right way, they will constantly get their interest instead of doing direct negotiations.
“In my previous life, I have worked in Sudan for at least more than 6 years and now I’m working with the corporates for the blocks and our experience is extremely good,” he noted.
Omar stated that the most important thing is that, if an investor comes or goes to any other country, it has to get two aspects which includes security, trust and respect.
The gas and oil companies are looking forward to going ahead with the blocks as planned as no one can change the geography but rather the history as South Sudan is a landlocked country.
“We have been here since 2018 and we have witnessed a lot of great developments especially in the infrastructure industry which is really a sign of prosperity,” he said, adding “if there are good facilities, there is a way to prosperity.”
The former president of Nile drilling service who is currently the president of Nile services and logistics, Majak Arop Wunrok stated that Nile drilling is one of the indigenous companies producing services in the oil and gas industry in the country.
Nile drilling company was established in 2015 as substitute of Nile Petroleum Company to provide drilling and other work services for the join operating companies in South Sudan including Dar petroleum in b3 and 7, DEPOC b1 and 4 and SUD b5A.
Arop said Nile drilling is managing to acquire and proceed towards development.
“We extend our calls to the investors that we have a long way to go to acquire more drilling services because this is the time this industry has got a huge opportunity,” he said.
The Nile drilling company’s former president revealed that the company is generating revenues from other corporates worth $550 million per month and this comes as a result of the vision that the company had to contribute to the parts of the share.
Arop however hinted that they are ready to take up the industry since they do have confident and reliable South Sudanese technicians and engineers who are performing well.
“If the investors’ relationship is not good with the people in the community, definitely he/she will count losses or waste of time because the community has an upper hand to decide who to invest and to leave once there is misbehavior in the community,” he underlined.
The country manager of Schlumberger South Sudan, Charles Dekori said the explorations to production cycle have become shorter with the technology.
He said the technology that was available in the industries in the past have managed to discover as many resources as possible adding that now it is getting more complicated meaning there is need to complex it in an appropriate approach when looking for an oil.
“We would advise the explores to try as much as possible to take advantage of all the technologies that have been developed in the decent past years because these technologies are developed based on the technologies that have come in,” he said.
Meanwhile, according to the Chairperson, South Sudan petroleum engineers and Geologists, Michael Alier Deng, said the country have nearly three decades in the oil and gas since the time of Sudan.
He said the engineers, technicians and experts have developed capacity of 67% of staff at Dar petroleum who are South Sudanese and most of them are operating in the field whether in block 1,2,4,5 and 3-7.
“Let’s be assured that we have technicians, engineers and experts that can be able to develop and run the projects and to see the targets as a result to attract more investors to South Sudan,” he emphasized.
Alier argued that there should be no question on doubt about South Sudanese not being capable of developing and running the projects in the oil and gas companies.