South Sudan: Unlocking our natural resources will stimulate our economy
4 min readBy John Deng Ateny, Perth, Western Australia
September 25, 2016 (SSB) — South Sudan national economy mainly depend on the nation’s extraordinary mineral wealth, especially on petroleum. Maintaining resources reliance economy requires new discoveries. Effective national exploration, data acquisition and minerals distribution is required to provide ongoing economic prosperity. South Sudan has only limited geological work and this work is either unrecorded or locked away in former masters’ archives.
More geological survey needs to be done to continue resource and reserve upgrade. Unfortunately, there is non-existence financial investment, lack of related legislations, political instability and other threats, in including the presence of active landmines. South Sudan is still categorised Greenfield. Majority of land remain virgin despite oil discovery and ongoing active work in other areas.
Exploration on current producing oil fields commenced 1974, well after oil exploration took place around Red Sea for over 15 years. It took only 4 years to discover oil in the South. More anomalous were hit and the reserve definition is ongoing.
There is a potential to find more reserves, many of the current and potential oil wells were high potential targets during early days of exploration. Targeting more areas for exploration, especially with present technologies will yield more mineral discoveries. Oil and gas exploration has traditionally relied on seismic, gravimetric and magnetometric techniques. New technologies, including non-traditional but environmentally friendly are being used for quick discovery.
One factor for high petroleum potential in South Sudan is the presence of thick quaternary sediments in the region. This rocks underlain majority of the South Sudan geology. Oil potential is not only limited to Upper Nile region but it is associated with sediments burial within the Rift Valley. Other factors such as lacustrine, terrestrial plants and animals fossils burial sped up the diagenesis. The climatic and tectonic process also helped oil gas formation.
Central government in collaboration with States, organisations, Higher Research Institutions, Exploration and Production Companies, must seek to uncover hidden resources. This task will involve, acquisition, processing, interpretation and delivery of data to one centralised database to develop preliminary geological model and the key mineral resource potential indicators in the ground.
While 80% of national economy depends on oil, there is a potential and history of other hard minerals in the country. Records shows, Geologists from the University of Khartoum studied gold occurrence in Luri, Kapoeta district, a long Yei Juba road, Yei and Mudri. In addition, other mineral endowment such, Uranium, Copper, Diamond and rare earth metals/elements (REE) are suspected in the region. While the rock assemblage does not support some suspicion. Ore deposits associated with felsic igneous magmas should be targeted.
Although most of the South Sudan igneous lithologies are metamorphic assemblages, there is a great potential of finding economical ore resource in addition to gold in the suspected areas and other parts of the country.
Besides mineral endowment, South Sudan has untapped ground water reserve in addition to Nile waters. As discussed in the previous article (Water Security in South Sudan and the case of Jonglei Canal Project), water crisis is increasingly becoming a global problem. Successful mapping and modelling of total water reservoirs will boost national economy.
As one of the Nile riparian States, South Sudan will benefit from Nile water, by effectively utilizing sudd wetland, building water infrastructures i.e. hydroelectric power, dams, irrigation schemes, interconnecting water ways.
Moreover, South Sudan has the potential to diversify its economy by investing in Agriculture, transport system and tourism. Allowing competitive hard minerals exploration will result in opening of new mines and established mining industry. This will open new frontier in employment, development economic growth.
The writer is earth scientist with extensive experience in resource industry. He can be reached on jateny@gmail.com
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