Roundup: Khartoum shows flexibility towards Juba demands to reduce oil transit fees

Sudan has shown flexibility towards South Sudan's repeated demands of Khartoum to reduce the transit fees of the south's oil transport through Sudan's territories.

"President Omer Hassan al-Bashir has directed to review the interim economic measures with the Republic of South Sudan," official SUNA news agency reported late Thursday evening, quoting an official source.

During a recent visit to Khartoum, South Sudan Foreign Minister Barnaba Benjamin revealed that his country requested the Sudanese government to reduce the oil transit fees due to the drop in the global oil prices.

Earlier, South Sudan was also reportedly threatened to shut down its oil fields if Khartoum refused its request to review the oil transit fees.

To this end, Sudan tribune disclosed a memo sent by South Sudan's Petroleum and Mining Ministry to Sudan's Petroleum Ministry demanding review of the oil transit charges.

"We are left with no option at the moment rather than to shut it down because it's not feasible. We cannot sell the oil at loss," the memo read.

Nevertheless, South Sudan Ambassador in Khartoum Mayan Dot was reported by Sudanese Media Center (SMC) to have denied that his country was planning to shut down the oil fields.

"What has recently been circulated by some media that South Sudan is intending to completely shut down the oil fields is untrue and baseless," Dot was quoted as saying.

"We are seeking to improve our relations with Sudan, and our demand to reduce the oil transit fees comes within the framework of our ties with Sudan and not a pressure on it," he noted.

Juba seems to have found itself forced to cut on its financial expenditure under the declining global oil prices and dropping of the south's oil production to about 160,000 barrels a day due to the ongoing civil war in the new-born state since 2013.

The oil deal, signed between Sudan and South Sudan in September 2012, stipulates that Juba would pay three billion dollars as assistance to Sudan in a period of three years besides that South Sudan's government would pay about 20 dollars as oil transit fees per barrel.

Before the signing of the agreement, Sudan suggested allotting a portion of South Sudan's oil as transit fees instead of specifying a figure, but South Sudan then dismissed the proposal and insisted on determining a figure.

South Sudan plunged into violence in December 2013, when fighting erupted between troops loyal to President Salva Kiir Mayardit and defectors led by his former deputy Riek Machar.

The conflict soon turned into an all-out war, with the violence taking on an ethnic dimension that pitted the president's Dinka tribe against Machar's Nuer ethnic group.

The clashes have left thousands of South Sudanese dead and forced around 1.9 million people to flee their homes. Endit