Sudan has ordered an investigation into a report of discrepancies in its oil revenue figures, the state finance minister said on Tuesday, adding he was worried oil groups might be short-changing the country.
Activists last week said they had found revenue figures for some oil fields published by Sudan’s Ministry of Finance were about 10% lower than figures for the same fields published in the annual reports of operator China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC).
Minister Lual Acuek Deng told Reuters Sudan’s presidency had asked the Ministry of Energy and Mining to check the revenue figures it received from oil producers.
”The presidency has asked the Ministry of Energy to check with their sources … This is serious because this is about the national revenues. We want to make sure that the figures we have been getting from the oil companies are correct,” he said.
Oil made up 95% of Sudan’s exports and 60% of its total government revenues in 2008, according to the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
When asked whether he feared oil companies might be under-reporting the amount of revenues they were taking from Sudan’s oilfields, Deng replied: ”There is a possibility.
”We have been asking that the IMF \has access to the books of the oil companies and the ministry of energy has access to the books of the oil companies. But this has not happened.”
Deng said oil groups operating in Sudan reported their revenue figures to the Ministry of Energy and Mining, which passed the data on for publishing to the Ministry of Finance.
The Ministry of Energy and Mining had already formed a committee to look into the figures, said Deng. No one was immediately available for comment from Sudan’s Ministry of Energy and Mining.
Last week’s report by UK-based Global Witness has sparked controversy in Sudan because it suggested the discrepancy might mean the country’s Khartoum government owed south Sudan hundreds of millions of dollars in oil revenues.
Relations between Sudan’s Muslim north and mostly Christian south have remained tense since the end of their two-decade civil war in 2005. Under a peace accord, both sides agreed to share the country’s oil wealth, with the south receiving half the state revenues from the oil drilled from its territory.
Sudan currently pumps some 500 000 barrels of oil a day, most of it found in the south.
Deng, who is a member of the south’s dominant Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM), said the implications of Global Witness’s report were wider than payments owed to the south.
”If it is the south is losing, then the national government is also losing to the oil companies … The concerned ministry {the Ministry of Energy and Mining} has to check.”
The Global Witness report said researchers found a 9% discrepancy between government and company estimates for production in 2007 from Sudan’s blocks 1, 2 and 4, run by the CNPC-led Greater Nile Petroleum Operating Company.
In 2005, Global Witness said there was a 26% difference between government and CNPC reports for blocks 1, 2 and 4, combined with block 6, also controlled by CNPC.
The study found a discrepancy of 14% for 2007 figures from blocks 3 and 7, operated by the CNPC-dominated Petrodar.
The report warned that a lack of transparency over oil revenues could fuel north/south distrust and undermine the 2005 peace accord, which also promised national elections, scheduled in April 2010, and a referendum on southern independence in 2011. — Reuters