Watchdog: UN summit failed to address Sudan oil revenue issue

The non-governmental watchdog organization Global Witness said that the United Nations meeting in New York about Sudan failed to address the issue of oil revenue transparency. The autonomous region of South Sudan and the federal government share oil revenues from oil concessions in South Sudan as part of the peace agreement monitored by the United Nations Mission in Sudan (UNMMIS).The UN high-level meeting last Friday, 24 September, was convened by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon. The US President Barack Obama, the Sudanese Vice-President, the Emir of Qatar, the South Sudanese President and other Arab and world leaders were present in New York and discussed the Sudan either at the high-level meeting, in their own meetings or in public statements.

“There were very few references to oil in the various speeches made at the meeting today and no direct mention in the communiqué, even though an agreement to share revenues between the north and south was a fundamental building block of the 2005 peace agreement, which bought an end to the 22-year civil war,” said a statement issued by Global Witness on Friday evening.

In September 2009, Global Witness revealed significant discrepancies between the oil revenue figures reported by the Sudanese government in Khartoum, and those published by the main oil company operating in Sudan, the Chinese CNPC. Similar discrepancies were noted 6 months later.

At a specially convened seminar in Khartoum in August 2010, Sudan’s new petroleum minister, Lual Deng, pledged to increase transparency in the industry, including by publishing production and revenue figures and commissioning an audit. However, the new figures have yet to be published.