by Jacob D. Chol

Abstract

South Sudan is endowed with enormous petroleum resource (oil and gas) situated in Greater Bahr el Ghazal and Upper Nile Regions. Exploration Production Shanng 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.

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