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WEEKLY NEWSLETTER
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Sudan
Index
In 1990 the mining industry accounted for less than 1 percent
of the total GDP. A wide range of minerals existed in Sudan, but
the size of reserves had not been determined in most cases. The
discovery of commercially exploitable quantities of petroleum in
the late 1970s offered some hope that the sector would play an
increased role in the economy in the future
(see
Petroleum Use and Domestic Resources
, this ch.). However, from February 1984,
some months after concessions were allotted, oil exploration
operations had been suspended in the south, where the largest
deposits were located, as a result of the region's security
problems. Nonhydrocarbon minerals of actual or potential
commercial value included gold, chrome, copper, iron, manganese,
asbestos, gypsum, mica, limestone, marble, and uranium. Gold had
been mined in the Red Sea Hills since pharaonic times. Between
1900 and 1954, several British enterprises worked gold mines in
the area, and extracted a considerable quantity of the metal--one
mine alone reportedly produced three tons of gold between 1924
and 1936. Gold also has been mined along the borders between
Sudan and Uganda and Zaire, but not in commercially profitable
amounts. During the 1970s, the government's Geological Survey
Administration located more than fifty potential gold-producing
sites in different parts of the country. Several joint ventures
between the Sudanese Mining Corporation, a government enterprise,
and foreign companies were launched in the 1980s; these
undertakings produced gold at Gebeit and several other mines near
the Red Sea Hills beginning in 1987. In 1988, about 78,000 metric
kilograms of gold ore were mined in Sudan. In late 1990, Sudan
and two French mining companies formed a joint venture company to
exploit gold reserves in the Khawr Ariab wadi in the Red Sea
Hills.
Chrome ore was mined in the Ingessana Hills in Al Awsat. In
the late 1970s, output was reportedly more than 20,000 tons a
year, of which more than four-fifths were produced by the
Ingessana Hills Mines Corporation, a subsidiary of Sudanese
Mining Corporation. A private operation produced the remainder.
The ore was exported, chiefly to Japan and Western Europe. In the
1980s, the establishment of ferrochrome processing facilities had
been discussed with Japanese interests, but the estimated 700,000
tons of reserves were insufficient for profitable longterm
operations. By 1983, when the civil war brought a halt to all
production in the Ingessana Hills, chrome production had declined
about 50 percent to only 10,000 tons per year. In 1988,
production of chromium ore was estimated at 5,000 metric tons.
Asbestos had also been found in the Ingessana Hills area. It was
reportedly of good commercial grade, and mining possibilities
were under study by a Canadian subsidiary of the United States
firm of Johns-Manville. A small pilot extraction plant had been
built, but larger scale operations were dependent on locating
adequate reserves and on the ending of the civil war.
Large gypsum deposits, estimated to contain reserves of 220
million tons, were found along the Red Sea coast. Reportedly of
high purity, the ore was mined mainly north of Port Sudan. In the
late 1980s, about 20,000 tons were produced annually, about 6,000
tons by the Sudanese Mining Corporation and the remainder by
private operations. Gypsum was used mostly in the production of
cement. Limestone, found in substantial quantities in Sudan, was
mined both for use in making cement and for other construction
materials. Marble was also quarried for the latter purpose.
There has been some commercial mining of mica, exploitable
deposits of which had been located in Ash Shamali Province by a
UN mineral survey team between 1968 and 1972. The Sudanese Mining
Corporation produced about 1,000 tons of scrap mica in FY 1978,
but output reportedly slumped thereafter to about 400 tons
annually. Manganese and iron ore, of which several large deposits
exist in different parts of the country, have been mined at times
but only on a small basis by international standards. There were
more than 500 million tons of iron ore deposits in the Fodikwan
area of the Red Sea Hills, and beginning in the late 1980s a
project had been planned to produce between 120,000 and 200,000
tons a month. Exploitation of Sudan's mineral deposits, however,
depended in large part on foreign companies willing to undertake
such risks in the face of the country's mounting problems, and on
international market factors.
Uranium ores have been discovered in the area of the Nuba
Mountains and at Hufrat an Nahas in southern Kurdufan. Minex
Company of the United States obtained a 36,000-square-kilometer
exploratory concession in the Kurdufan area in 1977, and the
concession was increased to 48,000 square kilometers in 1979.
Uranium reserves are also believed to exist near the western
borders with Chad and Central African Republic. Another potential
source of mineral wealth was the Red Sea bed. In 1974 officials
established a joint Sudanese-Saudi Arabian agency to develop
those resources, which included zinc, silver, copper, and other
minerals. Explorations below the 2,000-meter mark have indicated
that large quantities of the minerals are present, but as of 1990
no actual extraction had been undertaken.
Data as of June 1991
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