Arbitration panel gives oil field to Sudan

THE HAGUE, Netherlands

The Abyei region, with its rich oil reserves and grazing lands used by nomadic herders from the north and south, has suffered flare-ups of violence since the peace deal. The northern government and semiautonomous south asked the Hague-based Permanent Court of Arbitration to set the region’s permanent borders after a May 2008 battle in which 22 northern soldiers were killed, most of the town of Abyei was burned to the ground and 50,000 residents were forced to flee.

The five-member affirmed the northern boundary as set by a 2005 commission, but drew new lines in the east and west that placed the Heglig oil fields and the Nile oil pipeline under control of the Khartoum government.

AP