by Edmund Sanders
. . . With a new peace deal between southern rebels and Khartoum and the July 9
inauguration of a coalition government, international donors are preparing
to pump more than $2 billion into southern Sudan, a bleak, underdeveloped
region still largely devoid of asphalt roads, running water and electricity.
A new semiautonomous southern government, led by the formerly rebel Sudan People's Liberation Movement, plans to
spend $1.5 billion more annually on construction, courtesy of an
oil-revenue-sharing agreement with the north.
The giant development plan - one of the most ambitious in the world outside
Iraq - is drawing an army of would-be investors, speculators and
contractors, who are rushing to the designated southern capital, Rumbek, in
search of opportunity. . . .
Oil giants including Chevron Corp., Royal Dutch/Shell Group, China National
Petroleum Corp., Petronas of Malaysia and India's Oil & Natural Gas Corp.
have all had preliminary talks with SPLM officials, said one official in the
organization.
Under the peace accord, the north and south will divide oil revenues
equally, and new exploration will be approved by a joint commission. Sudan
currently earns about $3 billion a year from oil production, which is
expected to reach 500,000 barrels a day by year's end. . . .
FULL TEXT
Enver Masud, "Sudan, Oil, and the Darfur
Crisis," The Wisdom Fund, August 7, 2004
[The assessment would precede a World Bank plan to manage foreign donations
for Sudan from two trust funds - one for the north and one for the south--
Lesley Wroughton, "World Bank
returns to Sudan as donors plan comeback," Sudan Tribune, January 18, 2005]
Julie Flint, "Villagers in Sudan fight dam dictators," The Observer, July 24, 2005
[The gleaming oil refinery is the jewel of Sudan's oil boom, the mid-point
of a 900-mile pipeline from the southern oilfields to the Red Sea that is
projected to pump 500,000 barrels a day by the end of this year.--Declan
Walsh, "Sudan
at the head of a global sweep to mop up world's oil resources,"
Guardian, November 9, 2005]
[Now the UN is on to bigger things, like the re-colonization of Sudan under
the rubric of "humanitarian intervention". As Noam Chomsky points out,
"humanitarian intervention" was first invoked by the Fuehrer when he
liberated Poland George Bush-style some 60 years ago.--Mike Whitney, "Beware Boltan's
Sudden Humanitarianism," counterpunch.org, March 1, 2006]
[In 2005, they signed a peace accord that ended AfricaÕs longest-running
civil war, which killed an estimated 2.2 million people - 10 times as many
as in Darfur.--Jeffrey Gettleman, "Cracks in
the Peace in Oil-Rich Sudan as Old Tensions Fester," New York Times,
September 22, 2007]