President Salva Kiir has appointed Awow Daniel Chuang as South Sudan’s Caretaker Minister of Petroleum, according to an announcement distributed by APO Group on behalf of Energy Capital & Power on 1 October — placing him back at the head of the ministry just as the country enters its most politically fragile stretch since independence.
The appointment falls under the same caretaker structure Kiir created when he dissolved the country’s entire transitional government in late September, three months before South Sudan’s first national election since 2011. Chuang’s return to petroleum fits a pattern that stretches back years. He first led the ministry from 2018 to 2020, before being demoted to undersecretary when the Revitalized Transitional Government of National Unity formed. He was relieved of that post in 2022, moved to technical adviser, then abruptly made finance minister in March 2024 — only to be sacked four months later, becoming the sixth finance minister South Sudan had cycled through since 2020.
A 2020 report by anti-corruption investigators The Sentry also alleged Chuang, while petroleum minister, requested an unscheduled $621,000 loan from an oil-trading firm for his ministry without itemising its purpose; Chuang called the report fake.
He now inherits a ministry managing a resource South Sudan cannot function without and increasingly cannot fully control. Oil funds more than 90% of government revenue, but nearly all of it leaves the country through pipelines running across war-torn Sudan, and that route is no longer straightforwardly South Sudan’s to negotiate. Sudan’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces has controlled the Heglig oil fields since December 2025 and now collects roughly $4 of every $11-per-barrel transit fee South Sudan pays to move its crude north — money deducted directly from the share historically owed to the Sudanese government, under a tripartite arrangement industry sources describe to Sudan Tribune as murky and largely absent from Sudan’s own central bank disclosures.
Chuang’s priorities on taking office, per the announcement, are strengthening “institutional cooperation, internal coordination and effective regulation” within the ministry and improving oversight coordination with the National Legislative Assembly — language that reads less like ambition and more like damage control for an institution that has had little administrative continuity to build on.
The appointment also sets the stage for South Sudan Oil & Power 2026, the sector’s seventh annual conference, running 24-25 November in Juba under the theme “Resource Renaissance.” Organisers list 14 exploration blocks still open to international investors, alongside a separate push for mature-field redevelopment aimed at squeezing more output from South Sudan’s aging producing fields. Attracting that capital will mean convincing investors that a ministry with six leadership changes in under a decade, operating under a government installed as caretaker ahead of a contested December vote, can offer the regulatory stability upstream investment typically requires.
