July 2, 2007 (BEIJING) - - China National Petroleum Corp, the nation’s largest oil producer, will take up to a 40-percent stake in an oil exploration project in northern Sudan, a Chinese official in Khartoum said Monday.

"China National Petroleum Corp will take a stake of 35 percent to 40 percent in the project," Hao Hongshe, an official with the Economic and Commercial Counsellor’s Office of the Chinese embassy in Sudan, told AFP by phone.

He said the project, signed last week between the company and the Sudanese government, was still at the initial stages and the size of the investment would be decided later.

Under the 20-year production sharing contract, China National Petroleum Corp will have exploration rights to a block in shallow water on the Red Sea, according to a report by the company-run China Petroleum Daily on Monday.

The block covers an area of about 3.8 square kilometres (1.52 square miles) and the exploration period is six years, the newspaper added.

The company, parent of Hong Kong-listed PetroChina, will conduct exploration jointly with Indonesia state oil and gas company Pertamina, which has taken a 15-percent stake, Sudan’s state-run Sudapet, and three other companies.

CNPC already has a range of other energy projects in Sudan.

Energy-hungry China is Sudan’s top oil buyer, but it is also a key weapons supplier to the Sudanese government in a relationship that has drawn much criticism in the West.

China has often been accused of failing to exert any pressure on the regime of President Omar el-Beshir to stop the bloodshed in Sudan’s western Darfur region.

At least 200,000 people have been killed in Darfur and two million driven from their homes since February 2003, according to the United Nations.

But China has consistently argued that the international community should not pressure the Sudanese government and instead address what it sees as the root causes of the violence — poverty.

(AFP)