Despite reports on potential impact of violence in South Sudan on the oil market, the fundamentals don’t justify any significant implications.

South Sudan produces around 250,000 barrels per day (bpd) mainly from the Petrodar consortium fields in the Upper Nile state, which is pumping the biggest level of production of 200,000 bpd.

There are two other producing areas — 30,000 bpd from Unity state and around 20,000 bpd from Thar Jath field.

The bulk of this production, or 70 percent, is consumed by China, the biggest investor in the country’s oil industry. That is why it is natural for China to call for immediate cease-fire between the two warring factions.

Any impact on prices is expected to be felt in the Asian market, not only because it is the destination of the South Sudan crude, but the two crude types produced by South Sudan — Nile Blend and Dar Blend — are welcomed by Asian refiners because of their characteristics.

Nile Blend with API ranging between 34-36 degrees, less sulfur of 0.5 percent was originally begged after the Indonesian crude Minas and was seen as similar to the Chinese Daqing. The Dar Blend is heavier crude with API in the range of 24-26 degrees, more sulfur and acid took quite some time to establish its mark and is less welcomed by refiners.

Nile Blend is declining in volumes. It was the first to be pumped out back some 15 years ago. It peaked at 350,000 bpd before the separation of South Sudan in 2011 then started to decline due to reasons varying between fields’ aging, less investments and low recovery rate.

Dar Blend, which came on stream after some glitches in 2007, is the biggest in terms of volume and so far it has been affected by the fight like the fields in Unity state.

Still the main problem facing the South Sudan oil production is evacuation of foreign oil workers from the fields in the three producing areas.

Circulating information indicate that foreign companies led by the China National Petroleum Corp. had notified Juba that they plan to evacuate its staff and that South Sudan authorities had asked for a 10-day period to make some arrangements either in terms of reaching a political settlement or making any arrangement to compensate for foreign expertise so as to continue oil operations.

That seems unlikely and as long as there is political and security instability it is hard to expect foreign labor to be back to the fields.

The first result of this is for the market to forget about South Sudan oil for the time being.

But given the little volume of South Sudan (250,000 bpd), it is not expected to have that much of impact on well supplied oil.

However, the loss of the South Sudan oil will add to the increasing loss in African supplies.

Already, there is more than 1.1 million bpd in addition to some 350,000 bpd lost from Nigerian supplies. That brings the total loss from African supplies to more than 1.5 million bpd, but there are enough supplies around. Saudi Arabia alone has some 3 million bpd excess capacity that could be deployed to make up for any shortcoming.

Moreover, the market has lived with the loss of South Sudan oil for more than a year following the dispute between Khartoum and Juba on the transit fees and it came back only eight months ago.

On the other hand, the violence in South Sudan with its ethnic and tribal dimension will have its impact on two other fronts.

The first is South Sudan’s hopes and plans to increase its oil production. Its best hopes are pinned on Jongeli state, the first to be overrun by rebels.

In that troubled state there is what is known as block-B, where a consortium led by the French company Total has failed for more than seven years in digging even a single well.

A infighting engulfs the Jongeli state, hopes of accelerating oil excavation and production are delayed further.

Equally delayed are plans by Juba to construct a pipeline to ship its oil to world markets away from Sudan’s downstream facilities.

All issues related to security and community rights will be at the heart of plans to work out feasibility study for the proposed pipeline.

But for the time being, such plans are being put on the back burner.