The Government of South Sudan and the Oil Producing States received $3.2 billion in oil revenue for the last three years including the first two months of 2008, Sudanese government newspaper Sudan Vision reported.

The report revealed that GoSS received $798.4 million in 2005, $953.30 million in 2006 and 1,457.83 million in 2007. GoSS also received $231.39 million in January and 158.48 million in February 2008.

Unity State, an Oil Producing State, received $32.59 million in 2005, $38.14 million in 2006 and $37.19 million in 2007. It also received $5.48 million for the first two months of 2008.

According to the report, GoSS earned approximately $3.6 billion; Unity State earned $113.4 million and Upper Nile made $28.06 million with an aggregate total of $3.740 billion collected by South Sudan in terms of oil proceeds for those years.

Gazprom Board orders creation of winter gas reserves

The Gazprom board of directors has assigned its departments to draw up plans of preparing the facilities of Gazprom subsidiaries for work in conditions of the 2008 autumn and winter.

According to Prime-Tass, the information came from the Gazprom news department.

The Gazprom board of directors wants to ensure the maintenance and repair of operations at the facilities of the United Gas Transportation Network, and of creating gas reserves in underground gas storages before the beginning of the next autumn and winter period, which should be no smaller than 64 billion cubic meters.

Gazprom's subsidiaries were assigned to ensure the plans and programs of diagnosing, repairing and rebuilding of the facilities connected with the production, transportation, underground storage and processing of gas in 2008, as well as maintaining the operations for preparing the facilities for work in conditions of autumn and winter.

The Gazprom board of directors made this decision during the autumn and winter of 2007-2008. It was pointed out that Gazprom's subsidiaries had ensured the stable gas supply to Russian consumers, as well as gas exports.

Russian oil exports to non-C.I.S. down

Russian oil exports to non-C.I.S. countries fell 6.1 percent year-on-year in January-April to 67.617 million tons, or 4.096 million barrels a day, the Fuel and Energy Central Dispatch Center said.

Transneft, the national pipeline operator, pumped 62.767 million tons of Russian crude to non-C.I.S. countries in the four months. Exports bypassing Transneft came to 1.07 million tons.

In April alone, Transneft carried 16.416 million tons of Russian crude to non-CIS countries, while exports bypassing the monopoly totaled 1.07 million tons.

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Closing oil prices, May 8, 3 p.m. London

Brent crude oil: $122.46

West Texas Intermediate crude oil: $123.61

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(e-mail: energy@upi.com)