How Chinese firms are holding out hope for South Sudan’s oil lifeline

Name: China evacuates its citizens from Sudan as conflict enters second week
Uploaded: 2025-03-02T08:00:11.000Z
Duration: 1 min 55 s
Description: China evacuates its citizens from Sudan as conflict enters second week

Drilling is back on at two major oilfields after a damaged pipeline halted exports, while a China-funded pipeline may also be in the works

Reading Time:4 minutes

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Displaced Sudanese fetch water at a refugee settlement outside Juba, capital of South Sudan, last week. Damage to a major oil pipeline running through its conflict-torn northern neighbour has had a grave impact on South Sudan’s economy. Photo: Xinhua

Jevans Nyabiage

Published: 4:00pm, 2 Mar 2025Updated: 5:05pm, 2 Mar 2025

South Sudan, Africa’s youngest nation and heavily reliant on oil for over 90 per cent of its revenue, has seen its primary export stream severely disrupted for the past year.

Oil shipments via Red Sea ports have been largely halted due to damage to a crucial pipeline running through conflict-torn Sudan to the north, from which landlocked South Sudan broke away in 2011.

The damage to the Petrodar pipeline has had a devastating impact on the south’s economy, leaving the government struggling to pay workers as oil revenues collapsed.

The South Sudanese public has been left grappling with high inflation, as food security is threatened by high prices, climate change and an influx of displaced people from the north.

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China evacuates its citizens from Sudan as conflict enters second week

South Sudan’s economy contracted by 24.5 per cent last year, mainly due to the collapse in oil exports and its knock-on effects, according to an estimate by Andreu Paddack, sub-Saharan Africa country risk analyst at BMI, part of Fitch Solutions.