The Reality of Petroleum Resource Curse in South Sudan: Can this be avoided?

Abstract

South Sudan is endowed with enormous petroleum resource (oil and gas)situated in Greater Bahr el Ghazal and Upper Nile Regions. ExplorationProduction Sharing Agreements (EPSAs) were signed between the Governmentof the Republic of South Sudan and the foreign contractors in July 2011,immediately after South Sudan attained her independence from the Sudan. Yet,with enormous oil and gas production, South Sudan has not realized any level ofdevelopment and stability. Besides, oil companies have failed to adhere to thePetroleum Act 2012, Petroleum Revenue Management Act 2013 andEnvironmental Protection Regulations, leading to environmental degradation ofoil-producing states. The paper used field interviews and secondary sources intapping reality of petroleum resource curse in South Sudan. It combines casestudy, constructivist and process tracing methods to contextualize and validatecausal chains and empirical casual processes. The key finding is that petroleumresource curse is manifested in the nascent State by the levels of poverty in thecountry, environmental degradation in the oil producing areas, deep-seatedcorruption by political and military elites and the protracted political conflictstweaked on the availability of the petroleum resource revenues. Avoidingpetroleum resource curse would require stricken adherence to Petroleum Act2012 and Petroleum Revenue Management Act 2013.  * Senior Lecturer, University of Juba, Email dutsenior@yahoo.com