An Oil Tanker Stuck in a Sudanese Standoff

A red-and-black-hulled oil tanker holding South Sudanese crude worth almost $60 million has been stranded since February more than 15 miles off the coast of Singapore. South Sudan says its northern neighbor, Sudan, stole the oil on the ETC Isis and almost 2 million barrels more. Sudan says it confiscated the crude from South Sudan to make up for unpaid fees for use of a pipeline and a port on the Red Sea that the South needs to export its petroleum. “You have this dispute between two parties over the oil, and the tanker is now stuck in no-man’s land,” says Mark Tan, the partner in charge of shipping litigation at law firm Watson, Farley & Williams in Singapore.

Last year, after 22 years of civil war in Sudan, the East African nation split in two, with the South taking 75 percent of the country’s 470,000 barrels a day of crude output and the North controlling the pipelines and facilities needed to send it abroad. The two sides have since been fighting over how much the South should pay to use that infrastructure, and South Sudan has shut off its oil production, costing the government 98 percent of its total revenue.