South Sudan’s Oil Company Forms Joint Venture With Glencore to Sell Oil

South Sudan’s state oil company, Nilepet, has formed a joint venture with Glencore International Plc to market its oil, the managing director of the company said today.

The joint venture will be called Petro Nile and will be 51 percent controlled by Nilepet and 49 percent by Glencore, Mangok Khalil Mangok said by phone today from Juba, South Sudan’s capital. The company will start selling South Sudanese oil in August, he said.

Oilfields in South Sudan, which became independent on July 9, produced about 375,000 barrels of crude, pumped mainly by China National Petroleum Corp., Malaysia’s Petroliam Nasional Bhd. and India’s Oil & Natural Gas Corp.

The Sudanese authorities in Khartoum have been marketing the crude and exporting it though pipelines to Port Sudan on the Red Sea. Since the end of the civil war 2005, the north and south have split earnings from production in southern oilfields.

To contact the reporter on this story: Matt Richmond in Juba at mrichmond10@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Karl Maier at kmaier2@bloomberg.net