Oil wells “burning”

The southern-based Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) said it had captured three government stations and three oil wells near Bentiu, Upper Nile. SPLA spokesman in Nairobi, Samson Kwaje told IRIN that the oil wells were attacked last week and about 80 government soldiers killed, and that heavy fighting continued in the area. According to the SPLA, the clashes began on Friday, 26 January, near the oil city of Bentui, some 800 km south of the Sudanese capital of Khartoum. The SPLA said the oil wells were “burning”.

An statement issued in Cairo by SPLA commander Yasser Arman accused the Khartoum government of “using oil revenues to suppress the Sudanese people and extend the civil war.” He also warned foreign oil companies to leave the country. The statement said that “SPLA renews its warning that oil-extracting areas are legitimate military targets and that thousands of poor people have been displaced and their villages burned down because of the work of the oil companies”, news agencies said.

The SPLA announced last year that government-run oil installations were legitimate targets in the civil war, including those supported by foreign oil companies, but this is the first reported such attack. In May 1999, residents in oil-rich Bentiu took several foreign oil experts captive, demanding the government appropriate a share of oil revenues to development projects and the improvement of local services. Oil and the distribution of resources had “always been one of the issues between north and south, but is now the focus of the conflict militarily”, a regional expert told IRIN.