Bur Sudan

Bur Sudan
Bur Sudan
Coordinates	19 ° 37 ′  N , 37 ° 13 ′  E Coordinates: 19 ° 37 ′  N , 37 ° 13 ′  E
Basic data
Country	Sudan
State	al-Bahr al-ahmar
Residents	579,942 (2011)

Bur Sudan ( Arabic بور سودان, DMG Būr Sūdān ; Alternative spelling Port Sudan ,بورتسودان) is the capital of the Sudanese state of al-Bahr al-ahmar on the Red Sea . It is the country's most important port city and the largest city outside the capital region . Port Sudan is located in the north-east of Sudan around 680 kilometers from Khartoum .

population

The city has 579,942 inhabitants (2011 calculation).

Population development

year	Residents
1906 (n / a)	4,289
1973 (census)	132,632
1983 (census)	209.938
1993 (census)	305,385
2011 (calculation)	579,942

Looking for work, Bedscha nomads, the original inhabitants of the area, have settled in various parts of the city around the center. These include clans of the Beni Amer , Hadendoa , Ammarar or al-Nourab. Arab traders were already in the country before the Egyptian rule. The youngest population in the city are Chinese, who have been recruited as workers and engineers mainly for the oil industry.

history

Colonial row of houses in the market center. Typical arched arcades. The fine wood paneling, which should be reminiscent of the earlier Arab trading houses in Suakin, has almost disappeared

English main post office. The former Greek Orthodox church behind it, built by Greek traders at the beginning of the 20th century, was rededicated as the Coptic Church

The development into a modern city began at the beginning of the 20th century, the history of a port at this protected location goes back further. In Ptolemy's (around 100-175) geography atlas the place was called Theo Soteiron. The Portuguese navigator Juan de Castro provided a benevolent description of the seaport called Tradate north of Suakin around 1540 . De Castro's description of Tradate is associated with the tomb of the Islamic scholar Marsa Sheikh Barghut (or Baraud) in the early 19th century. He was venerated in a domed building ( qubba ) as the patron saint of sailors. The whole place was also referred to with the name of the saint for centuries.

Under Lord Cromer , the first British Consul General of Egypt , it was decided around 1900 to expand it into a modern port and rename it to Port Sudan. In 1906 a railway line was opened that led from the port westward through the desert to Atbara , where it connected to the existing line from Wadi Halfa to Khartoum . The line ended in Suakin , 60 kilometers south , which was soon abandoned as a port city. In that year Port Sudan had 4289 inhabitants. The loading facilities, including electric cranes, were completed by 1909. Cotton fabrics from India, lumber and cement were imported. Export goods were gum arabic , raw cotton , millet , sesame , animal skins and coffee from Ethiopia.

Port Sudan was of strategic importance during World War II. In the spring of 1941, the British defeated the last Italian warships in a sea ​​battle off the coast. After Sudan's independence in 1956, some industry was settled: a tire factory, grain mill and, from 1964, an oil refinery.

climate

Bur Sudan
Climate diagram
J F. M. A. M. J J A. S. O N D.     5.7   27 19th     0.2   27 19th     0.9   29 20th     9   32 22nd     0.7   35 24     0.5   38 26th     2.8   41 29     0.9   40 29     0   38 27     26th   34 25th     26th   31 24     12   28 21st Temperature in ° C ,  precipitation in mm Source: Sudan Meteorological Authority, data: 1971–2000; wetterkontor.de

Monthly average temperatures and rainfall for Bur Sudan Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec Max. Temperature ( ° C ) 26.6 26.9 28.5 31.8 35.4 38.4 40.7 40.4 37.9 33.8 30.9 28.3 O 33.3 Min. Temperature (° C) 19.4 18.7 19.5 21.7 24.2 26.3 28.5 29.0 27.1 25.3 23.7 21.1 O 23.7 Precipitation ( mm ) 5.7 0.2 0.9 9.0 0.7 0.5 2.8 0.9 0.0 25.7 25.8 11.8 Σ 84 Hours of sunshine ( h / d ) 6.3 8.1 9.1 10.2 10.4 9.5 8.8 9.3 9.4 9.6 7.5 6.9 O 8.8 Rainy days ( d ) 0.6 0.2 0.2 0.6 0.2 0.2 0.5 0.3 0.5 2.0 2.6 1.1 Σ 9 Water temperature (° C) 26th 25th 25th 27 29 29 30th 30th 30th 29 27 27 O 27.9 Humidity ( % ) 69 70 69 65 58 50 49 50 60 72 72 71 O 62.9 Source: Sudan Meteorological Authority, data: 1971–2000; wetterkontor.de

Cityscape

City center to the east to the main port

The port entrance is possible through a wide channel in the coral reef . Behind it, a natural bay about five kilometers long stretches inland, which borders a headland towards the sea on which the quays of the container port lie. This forms the seaward silhouette for the opposite city center. The business center designed by the English with numerous banks and administration buildings is based around the colonial market area with arched arcades on two-story rows of buildings, which are more completely preserved here than in other Sudanese cities. The “noble” area is to the east of the market towards the port. To the north of the center, a road and a railway bridge cross the harbor bay and lead to an industrial area with warehouses, a freight station and the small fishing port by the sea. In the west, the huge Deim Arab slum area is growing over several kilometers , in which Bedscha operate small-scale crafts (wood processing, vehicle repair). Deim Suakin is a simple, compact residential and commercial area in the south. A wide ring of simple residential districts (Deim) has formed in all directions on deserted land. A planned infrastructure (electricity, sewer pipes) does not exist here. When it rains in the summer months, occasionally also in December, floods can occur, especially in the slum areas.

At present (2008) the public power supply works only irregularly and for a few hours a day in the entire city. Public buildings and private households are dependent on the use of their own diesel generators. The power shortage is to be remedied by the power plant on the Merowe Dam .

Tank farms for the oil processing industry are lined up along the coast south of the city, where "salt production" was entered on a city map from 1982.

• Bur Sudan Stadium

economy

Container loading port. The backdrop of the evening promenade

In 1964, the country's first oil refinery opened in Port Sudan. It was owned by Shell and BP (Sudan) Ltd. and initially had a processing capacity of 20,000 barrels per day (b / d), which was expanded to 25,000 b / d in the early 1970s. In 1981 the White Nile Petroleum Company (WNPC) was founded , in which the Sudanese government, the Chevron Overseas Petroleum Corporation , Shell and Apicorp were involved, to build a 1,420 kilometer pipeline for crude oil from the Heglig production area via Kosti to a new terminal build south of Port Sudan. This project was abandoned in March 1984 after the SPLA attacked the oil fields, and further test wells that were planned at the end of the 1980s could not be carried out due to the ongoing civil war in South Sudan .

In 1990 Iran declared its support for Sudan, political and economic relations with Western countries were at a low point. The pipeline to the Heglig oil field was not completed until 1999. In August 1999, the first shipload of crude oil was exported to Singapore from a new terminal in the port of Bashair, 25 kilometers south of Port Sudan. At the beginning of 2000, 15 million barrels of crude oil had been shipped.

The economic upswing due to oil exports has so far bypassed the informal settlement of Deim Arab . Small craft and local trade dominate here

In 2006 crude oil production was 414,000 b / d. All refineries in the country had a processing capacity of 121,700 b / d in early 2007. The refinery in Port Sudan is the smallest with an average capacity of 21,700 b / d. The other two refineries with 50,000 b / d each ( El Gily and Concorp ) are located near Khartoum. (The El Obeid refinery is not included here.) Since the existing refineries could not meet the demand in the country, a contract was signed with Petronas in September 2005 to build a new refinery in Bashair near Port Sudan. This should have a capacity of 100,000 b / d and be ready in 2009. Petronas and the Sudanese Ministery of Energy and Mining have entered into an equal partnership.

The port has been managed by the state-owned Sudan Ports Corporation since 1974 . The 1663-meter-long north quay has 11 loading bays for general cargo, the south quay is 733 meters long and offers four loading bays, including two container terminals . Until 1980, the port was mainly geared towards onward transport by rail, only afterwards were access options created for trucks for loading. In 2006 the Sudanese government signed a contract with a Chinese company to further expand the container port. Chinese help created the new container terminal with 3 berths, 4 portal cranes and 8 RTGs (tire gantry cranes for the container warehouse). The terminal is controlled by modern software, which also provides for the location of the container positions and devices using DGPS signals. The handling capacity of the container terminal is a maximum of 600,000 container units. In the future, the port administration expects that there will be more so-called through freight traffic, with unloaded containers only being temporarily stored in Port Sudan in order to be transported to the final port with another ship.

New construction of the container terminal put into operation in 2012

Apart from crude oil and with the exception of Ethiopian coffee, exports via the port of Port Sudan remained the same as in 1900. Sugar, peanuts and live cattle have been added. The most important customer countries - again apart from oil, which goes to China - are Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates . Food such as wheat, industrial products, chemicals, textiles and relief supplies in the event of famine are imported, especially since the mid-1980s a large part of the relief supplies for Operation Lifeline Sudan .

The area around the city consists of desert. Insufficient amounts of drinking water are brought in via a pipeline from Wadi Arbaat in the mountains of the Red Sea, which is why a company has been commissioned to build a seawater desalination plant since September 2006. Studies of pipelines to drain Nile waters have already been carried out.

The diving sites on the Red Sea are among the best in the world, not just around the famous Umbria wreck . However, the infrastructure for boat tours in Sudan is underdeveloped. There are no tourist beaches.

Infrastructure

Port Sudan is the country's only seaport. The ferry to Jeddah , which is used by Mecca pilgrims , migrant workers and rarely tourists, leaves from Suakin as it has for centuries. On the railway line (station: 19 ° 37 ′ 29 ″  N , 37 ° 12 ′ 46 ″  E ) from Atbara to Port Sudan, a weekly passenger train ran until 2003, which took 24 hours for this route. This train ran every two weeks until around 2007, after which passenger transport was discontinued. Freight train traffic continues. The two road connections to Atbara and Kassala are paved and in good condition. Most of all goods imported and exported to and from Khartoum are transported by truck ( tractor-trailer combination) via Atbara.

• Bur Sudan Airport

Training center

Red Sea University campus

Red Sea University (Jameat Al Bahar Al Ahmar) in the business center was founded in 1994 and specializes in engineering and marine research (Institute of Marine Research) . Besides the university in Kassala, it is the only higher educational institution in the east.

Web links

Commons : Bur Sudan  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

1. ↑ bevoelkerungsstatistik.de ( Memento of the original from December 29, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
2. ↑ ^{a b} Port Sudan . In: Encyclopædia Britannica . 11th edition. tape 22 : Poll - Reeves . London 1911, p. 134 (English, full text [ Wikisource ]).
3. ^ Robert Kerr (Ed.): General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Arranged in Systematic Order. 1811-1820. Volume 6, Chapter 3: The Voyage of Don Stefano de Gama from Goa to Suez, in 1540, with the intention of Burning the Turkish Galleys at that port; written by Don Juan de Castro, then a Captain in the Fleet; afterwards governor-general of Portuguese India. On-line
4. ↑ Ad. Chr. Gaspari, G. Hassel u. a .: Complete manual of the latest earth description. Sixth Section, First Volume, which contains the northern half of Africa. Weimar 1824, p. 331.
5. ↑ Sudan Meteorological Authority: Climate Information Port Sudan. World Meteorological Organization, accessed October 27, 2012 . 
6. ↑ Port Sudan Floods OCHA Situation Report No. 1. Relief Web, October 13, 2005
7. ↑ Helen Chapin Metz: Sudan. A Country Study. Library of Congress, USA, 1991. Chapter: Petroleum Use and Domestic Resources.
8. ^ Sudan: Oil and Gas. ( Memento of the original from May 28, 2000 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Mbendi, July 29, 2008 
9. ^ Sudan Energy Data. EIA, Energy Information Administration, April 2007 ( Memento of the original from November 15, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
10. ↑ Infrastructures. (PDF; 306 kB) Sea Ports Corporation
11. ↑ China, Sudan sign $ 79 mln contract to deepen Port Sudan harbor. Sudan Tribune, June 10, 2006
12. ↑ UNIDO Project Concept on Solar Powered Water Desalination in Port Sudan. (PDF; 75 kB)
13. ^ Red Sea University. africa.msu.edu  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.