Focus To Shift To Minerals After Oil Resumption: Ministry

This article was last updated on May 25, 2022

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The second Undersecretary for the Mining Sector Ministry of Petroleum and Mining, Dr. Andu Ezbon Adde said: “The World Bank is taking interest in our country; on as to how much we shall be generating the oil in terms of the volume of the oil, money coming in and how perhaps it changes the structure of development in our country.”

“For a long time our Country has been relying only on oil but now it is trying to move into the mineral sector because it is one of the important areas. We have gold in Eastern Equatoria and Central Equatoria. We have diamond in Western Bahr el Ghazal. We have marvel in Kapoeta, Kajo-Keji and Mangayet in Western Bahr el Ghazal. So all these, when we study them in more details and exploit them it will help in the development of South Sudan,” he said.

When South Sudan shutdown its oil production, the World Bank stopped funding to some of its project in South Sudan, but three days after the resumption of the oil the World Bank is promising to fund project in South Sudan.

“We discussed with him that with respect to the mineral sector, we want to do geo-science mapping all over the South and we also need to train our geologies and recruit more,” he said.

“When samples are collected either by companies working for minerals or local geologies we need to analyze the samples here immediately so that we know what to do next,” he added.

After the discussion with the Minister Stephen Dhieu Dau, the World Bank has asked the Ministry to provide a list of their priorities for funding.

According to the World Bank Representative from oil and Gas Division, Washington DC, Allan Cunningham the World Bank is promising US $ 2 million grant.

“Am here to talk about assistance that the World Bank and other development partners are giving to the government and the Ministry in the petroleum mining efforts,” Cunningham said.

“We talked about specific grant funding that the World bank will provide in the petroleum sector and we are looking now towards the implementation of a number of projects and ways how that grand can be used to help support capacity building,” he added.