Sudan asks Britain's White Nile to leave disputed oil block

Sudan has asked Britain's White Nile Plc to withdraw from a disputed oil block in the south and will assess compensation to the firm, south Sudan's industry minister said on Friday.
"White Nile is to pull out from Block B, and its properties will have to be assessed by a technical committee appointed by the ministry of energy and mining to be refunded," Albino Akol Akol told Reuters. White Nile's operations manager Phillip Ward in South Sudan's capital Juba said the company was shocked by the decision.
"Today was the first time we heard this. It is out of the blue. It's not good news," said Ward. Ward said it was still unclear how compensation was going to be made to the company. White Nile had paid $18 million on seismic testing alone on the block.
The block was disputed between French oil giant Total SA and the British exploration company, which is 50 percent owned by the semi-autonomous south Sudan government oil company Nilepet. Total had taken the dispute to a British court. But the decision to ask White Nile to withdraw was made by the Sudanese National Petroleum Commission which under a north-south peace deal has authority to assign oil contracts.
Akol is a member of that commission. He said the exact consortium percentages of Block B were as yet unclear, but the south's state oil company Nilepet and the northern state company Sudapet would each have a 10 percent share.
Total originally had 32.5 percent, as did US Marathon Oil Corp Kuwaitis had 25 percent and Sudapet 10 percent. Marathon, because of US sanctions, had pulled out of the block, Akol added. He said a replacement company was still to be found, but that White Nile was out of the running. South Sudan's semi-autonomous government had allowed exploratory drilling by White Nile in areas already claimed by Total, which says it signed with Khartoum before a 2005 peace deal ended more than two decades of north-south civil war.
Most of Sudan's oil lies in the landlocked south, although refineries and pipelines are in the north. White Nile started drilling its first well in its disputed 67,000 square km (25,870 sq mile) concession in the swampy Jonglei state earlier this year. Its block, Block Ba, was part of a larger concession, Block B previously assigned to the Total-led consortium by the Khartoum government.