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. Exploration
Production Sharing Agreements (EPSAs) were signed between the Government
of 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 of
development and stability. Besides, oil companies have failed to adhere to the
Petroleum Act 2012, Petroleum Revenue Management Act 2013 and
Environmental Protection Regulations, leading to environmental degradation of
oil-producing states. The paper used field interviews and secondary sources in
tapping reality of petroleum resource curse in South Sudan. It combines case
study, constructivist and process tracing methods to contextualize and validate
causal chains and empirical casual processes. The key finding is that petroleum
resource curse is manifested in the nascent State by the levels of poverty in the
country, environmental degradation in the oil producing areas, deep-seated
corruption by political and military elites and the protracted political conflicts
tweaked on the availability of the petroleum resource revenues. Avoiding
petroleum resource curse would require stricken adherence to Petroleum Act
2012 and Petroleum Revenue Management Act 2013.
* Senior Lecturer, University of Juba, Email dutsenior@yahoo.com
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