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Sudanese protesters on Saturday blocked two key pipelines in Port Sudan, the main seaport in the Red Sea, over a peace deal with rebel groups, the oil minister said.
Warning of “an extremely serious situation,” Oil Minister Gadein Ali Obeid told AFP.
“The entrances and exits of the port’s export terminal have been completely closed” since Saturday morning, he said.
Last October, several rebel groups signed a peace deal with the Sudanese transitional government, which came to power shortly after the ouster in April 2019 of longtime autocrat Omar al-Bashir.
Protesters, from the Sudanese Beja minority, say the deal, with rebels in the Darfur region and Blue Nile and South Kordofan states, has ignored their interests.
The Beja rebels struck a peace deal with the Bashir regime in 2006 after a decade of low-intensity conflict in Port Sudan and the east.
Port Sudan is the country’s main seaport and a vital trade hub for its export-dependent economy.
The government in Khartoum receives around $ 25 for every barrel of oil sold in South Sudan, according to official figures.
South Sudan produces around 162,000 barrels per day, which are transported by pipeline to Port Sudan and then shipped to world markets.
“There are enough (oil) reserves to meet the country’s needs for up to 10 days,” Sudan’s petroleum ministry said in a statement.
He warned the export pipeline could suffer damage after protesters prevented a ship from loading crude.
Protests against the October 2020 deal have rocked eastern Sudan since last week.
On September 17, demonstrators blocked access to the docks in Port Sudan.
Protesters blocked the entrance to the airport and a bridge connecting Kassala state to the rest of the country on Friday.
The unrest comes as Sudan grapples with chronic economic problems inherited from Bashir’s regime.
Shortly after its start, the transitional government of Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok said it had foiled an attempted coup by supporters of the ousted president.
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