Severe Birth Defects Plague South Sudan’s Oil Fields

Miscarriages and birth defects are commonplace at the dilapidated hospital in South Sudan’s oil patch, according to senior staffers, and locals blame the industry, whose towering smoke stacks and storage tanks loom in the distance — the only significant economic activity for thousands of miles. In February, Nyakhor Mat Yiet, a mother in her thirties, gave birth to a boy whose skull and brain were only partially formed, said Simon Kutey, the hospital’s administrator. The infant died in her arms. A month later, another mother gave birth to a child with no limbs. The infant passed away a few hours later.

“You may find a child being born with blindness or with no eyes. Sometimes you will find missing legs or missing hands. Most often, they are not being reported,” said Kutey, whose aunt gave birth to a baby boy with no eyes several years ago. Water from the borehole that serves the area around the hospital is so bitter and salty that doctors and nurses have stopped using it for patients.

Koch County — a neglected corner of one of the poorest countries on earth — is not an easy place to live. Child mortality is high, malnutrition is common and rainy season floods spread cholera. But congenital disease is what families in this region fear the most.

Birth defects have been devastating families who live near oil wells owned by a consortium led by Petronas, Malaysia’s national oil and gas company and one of the world’s largest crude producers, for almost two decades, Bloomberg News found during a months-long investigation based on meeting minutes, interviews with health officials, hydrologists, residents and humanitarian workers as well as medical records and certified water sampling. Drinking water sources in villages within at least 20 miles of its operations are contaminated with heavy metals to levels far exceeding international norms, according to tests of samples collected by Bloomberg. There's no proven connection between the birth defects and contaminated water, and no lawsuit has been brought against any of the oil companies in the area — which is deeply impoverished and has little access to legal recourse — on such allegations, yet researchers who have examined the matter say there's little doubt there's a link.

While exact figures are hard to come by because cases in rural areas often go undocumented, the Sudd Environmental Agency, a local NGO, has documented 144 cases of birth defects in Unity State, where Koch is located, between January 2021 and April 2022, the latest data available. During a weeklong visit this year, Bloomberg spoke with the families of, and doctors who treated, 11 children born with birth defects since 2021.

The devastation wrought by the industry echoes similar disasters created by extractive companies across Africa — decades of crude spills in Nigeria’s Niger Delta, the abandoned mines of South Africa, the collapse earlier this year of a tailings dam at a Chinese copper mine in Zambia.

Oil companies operating in South Sudan are responsible for the contamination of the water drunk and used by more than 600,000 people — or 5% of the population of the country — according to a German NGO that has studied the issue for years.

Local officials and scientists working for NGOs say there are far more birth defects in Koch County than there were before oil production began in 2006 and the problem has gotten worse with time. “Within the community I have personally witnessed an increase in cases,” Kutey said. “Elders here remember a time when deformities were not an issue.”

Petronas sent a three paragraph response to a detailed list of 24 questions related to the allegations in this article. It did not directly address the issue of birth defects or environmental devastation.

“Petronas affirms that during our time in South Sudan, all operations were conducted in compliance with applicable laws, regulations, and operating standards,” the company said, adding that it had “consistently cooperated with regulatory audits and addressed matters through proper and legally mandated channels.”

Its activities, carried out by the consortium, “adhered to the regulatory framework and operational requirements of the host country,” it added. “Guided by our commitment to human rights, we also undertook corporate social impact programs in supporting and uplifting local communities.”

It said that its role in the country formally ended with the complete withdrawal of its local subsidiary on Oct. 1, 2024, including its 40% stake in the consortium that operates in Koch. It was the largest shareholder and operator of the field in Koch County.

Petronas has known about the rise in congenital disease since at least 2011, when it first met with a German nonprofit called Sign of Hope, which had been documenting and campaigning about contamination. In the years that followed, Sign of Hope and others ran a series of tests finding high levels of lead in people’s hair and other heavy metals in the water. Petronas didn’t respond to specific questions about its knowledge of or allegations that it’s responsible for water contamination or birth defects.

The issue came to a head on a crisp November day in 2015, when Sign of Hope’s founder, Klaus Stieglitz, presented his case to officials from South Sudan’s Petroleum Ministry, senior employees from the Petronas-led consortium and two representatives from Mercedes-Benz AG, which helped arrange the meeting in Stuttgart. The two companies have a roughly $70 million per year strategic partnership for their famed Formula 1 team, according to people familiar with the matter who requested anonymity to discuss sensitive commercial matters. Mercedes-Benz declined to comment on the size of the deal.

In that 2015 meeting, Emi Suhardi, the president of the Petronas-led oil consortium, called Stieglitz’s findings “unproven derogative information,” according to minutes of the gathering written by South Sudan’s petroleum ministry and seen by Bloomberg. Humoon Chol Deng, director of health, safety and environment at the ministry, went a step further: Unless Sign of Hope stopped its campaigning, the ministry would consider the organization — a modest outfit mostly funded by the German government — to be a threat to national security. He then ordered Sign of Hope to stop publishing allegations of water pollution.

Reached by phone in Juba, Deng, who still serves in the same role at the ministry, declined to comment because he’s not authorized to speak to the media. When asked about his interactions with Sign of Hope he said: “I do not speak to journalists.”

The ministry and South Sudan’s presidency didn’t respond to detailed lists of questions or repeated requests for comment.

The two Mercedes-Benz employees — in charge of compliance, human rights and sustainability — had helped set up the meeting. Mercedes’ role in brokering discussions about the environmental devastation allegedly caused by its F1 partner and lead sponsor hasn’t been previously reported.

“We repeatedly worked to facilitate a direct exchange and dialogue between the affected parties including Petronas and the NGO Sign of Hope,” said a Mercedes-Benz spokesperson. “Our goal back then was to maintain a direct exchange and thus contribute to bringing about an amicable solution for all parties involved.”

The official added that Petronas “has shown credible information to us that they have made efforts in recent years to strengthen their human rights due diligence procedures and to evaluate and improve the situation on the ground.”

On its website, Mercedes says it makes sure when choosing direct business partners that “they comply with the law and follow ethical principles.”

“Both our potential and existing business partners are subject to risk-based integrity checks,” it says. “Our aim is to identify possible integrity violations early on. We continuously improve our Due Diligence and monitoring processes. If a partner fails to comply with our standards, we reserve the right to terminate the cooperation or the selection process.”

Given Mercedes’ reputation and its stated values, Stieglitz said he was disappointed by Mercedes’ response at the meeting in Stuttgart.

“I had expected them to stand up and condemn what just happened and stop being sponsored by Petronas,” he told Bloomberg. “They did not.”

Due to its ability to act as a natural sponge, the wetlands stabilize water flow to the White Nile River. They also filter and purify water, removing pollutants and sediments, acting as a kind of giant kidney for the region.

In the 1970s, oil was discovered nearby by Chevron Corp. in what would become known as Block 5A. In 1997, Petronas formed a consortium — alongside the Swedish oil company Lundin Oil AB, OMV Exploration GmbH from Austria and Sudapet Ltd., Sudan’s state-owned oil company — to explore the area. Sudapet, which has since been renamed Nilepet Corp., didn’t respond to multiple requests for comment; neither did the other current consortium member, Indian oil company Oil & Natural Gas Corp.

A spokesperson for Lundin said the company sold its interest in the block to Petronas in 2003, prior to extraction, and declined “any comments relating to the oil extraction that took place after we left the block.” OMV said it was a minority shareholder until 2003: “The decision to exit this ethically conflicted and civil war-torn country was, in our view, the right one.”

“From 2000 onwards, Amnesty International began reporting on human rights violations in Sudan and they and other NGOs were highly critical of Western oil companies operating there, including OMV,” the company said in a statement. “OMV considers human rights as universal values! It therefore condemned the alleged human rights violations and in 2002 security concerns caused the joint venture to cease all exploration activities.”

At the time, Koch County was still under control of the Sudanese government, though tensions were already simmering with rebel groups. The consortium, meanwhile, stepped up its activities and began importing equipment to build roughly 30 oil wells.

In 2006, the consortium — renamed the Sudd Petroleum Operating Co. (SPOC) after independence — was ready to start extracting oil. Crude was already a major factor driving the civil war enveloping the country. In order to secure the land around Block 5A, Sudan’s government carried out a violent military campaign. Civilians were indiscriminately and intentionally killed by Sudan’s army and allied militia, according to plaintiffs in a Swedish case alleging that executives at Lundin Oil conspired with Sudanese dictator Omar Al-Bashir to “clear” oil concessions. Lundin strongly denies the allegations, its spokesman said. The case is ongoing — a verdict is expected next year.

Production commenced in 2006, five years before South Sudan would declare independence, and already, locals began to notice the water had changed.

The water that comes to the surface as waste during oil production — known as “produced water” — often contains substances like arsenic, radium, salts and other chemical additives that help with extraction, and it was beginning to contaminate the aquifer, according to hydrologists and local government officials.

After being separated from the crude oil, the produced water — a toxic brew of heavy metals, hydrocarbons, drilling fluids and salt — should be injected deep underground, according to best practice in the industry. But in Koch, the consortium stored it in giant — but much shallower — pits and it seeped into the soil, helped along by impoverished locals who steal the protective lining designed to prevent leaks and use it for roofing on their homes.

Koch County’s annual flooding season created a new peril: The pits often overflowed, sending thousands of cubic meters of toxic water running into nearby streams, ponds, canals and floodplains.

This month, as flash flooding ravaged Koch County, legislators and representatives from SPOC visited the oil fields in the area to address local concerns about pollution and maternal deaths, according to a report on South Sudan Broadcasting Co. "We talked to them, we promised them that most of their challenges, we are going to tackle them as a government and the company," said Victoria Bol, director of community development for the petroleum ministry.

To prevent such natural disasters, oil companies are supposed to maintain the pits’ integrity and use filtering technology to ensure water that goes back into the biosphere is safe.

In 2008, Stieglitz, who was visiting South Sudan to provide aid, received complaints from one of his partner organizations about the water in Koch. Villagers told him about children vomiting after drinking from local pumps, and cattle getting sick.

Those complaints would be sent to the local health department, said James Tut, Koch's director of health. The authorities then informed SPOC's community development officer, who repeatedly said there was no proof of a link between oil pollution and deformities, according to Tut, local health workers and a dozen residents in Koch County who complained to the company.

Petronas did not comment about individual complaints it has received. Sensing little movement on the issue, Sign of Hope in 2014 and 2016 conducted two peer-reviewed studies. Their conclusion: the oil wells had contaminated water in Koch County and residents living close to the oil production site were exposed to heavy metals including lead and barium.

In 2014, experts from African Water, the University of Juba and Sign of Hope found that the upper aquifer in Koch County was “polluted by slowly seeping, saline waters from crude oil production.” The conclusion was based on 90 tests conducted at 76 sites in the vicinity of the oil facility.

The following year, Sign of Hope commissioned a study to analyze human hair samples from affected areas surrounding Block 5A. The results showed a “toxic health endangerment” for both lead and barium, which can cause congenital disease, increased blood pressure and breathing difficulties.

The findings showed that concentration of lead increased steadily as residents got closer to the oil field. Lead levels in human hair in Koch were fifteen times greater than in countries such as Germany and Poland.

Between 1999 and 2020, the oil industry released 8.3 million tons of salt, 7.9 billion liters of well-drilling fluids including lead, nickel and cadmium, and 6 million liters of crude into South Sudan’s soil, according to Sign of Hope estimates.

In 2010, Mercedes had announced its “technical partnership” with Petronas for its F1 team. Mercedes F1 Chief Executive Officer Toto Wolff has referred to Petronas as part of the team’s “family.” The Malaysian petro-giant provides Mercedes with cutting-edge fuel and lubricants, and engineers trackside during races.

“Mercedes-Benz has a high reputation in Germany, so we thought that's the key to success for the people in South Sudan,” Stieglitz said.

In March 2010, Stieglitz wrote a letter to Dieter Zetsche, then CEO of Mercedes-Benz, requesting to “enter into a dialogue" with Petronas, noting “repeated cases of illness and even death among people around the oil production sites” in Koch County. In late 2010, Mercedes asked officials from the Petronas-led consortium to meet with Sign of Hope, emails between Sign of Hope, the oil consortium and Mercedes show.

In March 2011, a senior official at Mercedes wrote to Bacho Pilong, a Petronas executive, saying that the German automaker was “deeply concerned” that the goal to have “significant improvements” around the oil facility by the end of that month was “heavily jeopardized,” according to an email seen by Bloomberg.

At the end of 2011, Sign of Hope proposed launching a public-private partnership between Petronas and the German development organization GIZ with the goal of purifying produced water and the group held initial talks in 2012. But the plan never materialized due to a lack of buy-in, Stieglitz said. A spokesperson for GIZ declined to comment.

Then, after several years of little progress, Mercedes scheduled the meeting in Stuttgart in 2015 between Sign of Hope, South Sudanese officials and SPOC. But the atmosphere was frosty from the start. By the time the South Sudanese official declared him a national security threat, Stieglitz realized his attempts had failed.

A few hours later, at a local steak restaurant, Deng and a senior Mercedes executive sat across from Stieglitz.

Out of the blue, Stieglitz said, Deng described how a South Sudanese journalist had recently wound up shot dead in the streets of Juba. “He looked in my eyes and said ‘to the deepest regret of our president.’” After a final meeting in April 2017, he gave up his campaign. Stieglitz never returned to South Sudan. Mercedes and Deng didn’t respond to specific questions about the meeting.

Before she became pregnant, she would collect water from a stream around 10 miles from Petronas’s facilities. Often, she said, there’d be an oily, reddish scum on its surface. The water tasted salty. So she used sachets of chlorine and calcium hypochlorite in an attempt to purify it.

In April 2020, she gave birth to Kai, who was born with no eyes. After a couple of days, she began wondering why her baby lacked motor skills. She walked 50 miles from Koch to the regional capital, Bentiu, where she arrived at a hospital run by the humanitarian organization Medicines Sans Frontieres.

“The doctor told us this deformity had occurred because of where we live near to the oil companies,” she said as Kai, now five years old, rolled around playing on the sandy floor of a hut.

She returned home, but Kai struggled to feed and needed specialist medical care. So Duoth reported her case to Koch County’s health director, who then sent a report to a manager at the SPOC facility.

Soon after, Duoth said, a SPOC official visited Koch, where he promised to provide clean water and drill a new borehole. They also supplied drugs to the hospital. But, she said, “nobody from the company visited me.”

Today, some of the worst moments come when she brings Kai to play in the village — the children just laugh and abandon him in the dirt. “That is what pains my heart,” she said.

Koch County is full of such tragic stories. During a week-long trip in June, Bloomberg interviewed the family of an infant born with seven fingers in 2024, two mothers who had recently lost their babies after they were born with severe deformities and medics who provided pictures of two separate deformity cases: a child with two heads and another born with no genitalia and parts of the abdomen formed outside the body. Both passed away shortly after they were born.

In April 2021, Sarah Nyaluak, a resident of Rier, the nearest village to the oil wells, gave birth to a girl with a heart that was too small and severe breathing difficulties.

“The oil industry destroyed our lives,” said Nyaluak, 27.

Every year, Nyaluak explained, runoff water stored inside colossal pits two miles from her home overflows when seasonal rains hit. SPOC brings water in trucks to the community every week, but there’s nowhere near enough to serve them all.

Nyaluak and her husband, who works for SPOC in a building where it stores chemicals and monitors leaks, complained to company officials.

“The doctor inside the base camp told me there was nothing they could do and gave me some basic medication,” she said. Three months later, her baby died.

Even after the death of her child, she still gathers water at a nearby pond. She’s since had two more miscarriages. She knows the water is dangerous to drink but has no other choice.

The family of Kornelio Mayak Geer is an exception. Geer’s family lives north of Koch County, near oil production sites run by a different consortium, the Greater Pioneer Operating Co. (GPOC), in which Petronas owned a 30% stake until last year.

Geer was a GPOC employee. In 2019, his wife gave birth to a baby with only one, severely deformed leg.

He felt that if he went directly to GPOC, he would get nowhere. “That the problem of this deformity is theirs, they cannot accept,” he said.

So the family complained to the petroleum ministry and in December 2020, representatives from GPOC paid for Geer and his son, Ping Mayak Khor, to travel to Germany to investigate the cause of his deformity. Medical records from tests conducted at a laboratory in Berlin seen by Bloomberg show abnormal levels of a host of chemicals including aluminum, rubidium, barium and tin – and 0.5 milligrams of lead per 100 grams on the child’s hair. In the US, there is no level of lead exposure considered by health authorities to be safe for children.

The petroleum ministry said “it is highly likely that the embryo” has been affected by the exposure of chemicals related to the oil industry “leading to deformation of the child,” according to a letter it sent to GPOC in August 2021 seen by Bloomberg.

Due to the “elevated abnormal levels” of toxic minerals in Khor’s hair, “there is a high likelihood of these substances contributing to deformities of the embryo in the first three months of pregnancy,” the ministry determined after reading the results of the child’s toxicology report. GPOC bears “the full responsibility for the care, investigations and treatment of the deformed child,” the ministry said. GPOC did not respond to several requests for comment.

Today, Mayak is six years old and unable to walk. He’s prone to illnesses, has learning disabilities and suffers from a weak immune system.

“My child relies on a caretaker for everything,” Geer says. “He can only point when he needs something.”

Since early 2024, daily exports of 150,000 barrels have largely dried up. Petronas — which also had significant stakes in GPOC and one other consortium operating in South Sudan — has sued the government, arguing it obstructed a $1.25 billion sale of its assets.

South Sudan last August accused Petronas of failing to carry out an environmental audit and pay damages to local communities when it abandoned its operations, according to a letter to the oil company seen by Bloomberg. Since then, the government has taken over its assets and is currently looking to bring in a new investor to purchase Petronas’ 40% stake in SPOC.

Although oil production has plummeted, the water remains a danger to Koch County and its 191,000 people. In June, Bloomberg took four water samples from locations around the oil facilities — three within 6 kilometers of the main production facility and one 23 kilometers away. Samples were collected from a produced water pit, a borehole in Koch town, a canal used by locals close to the oil facility and a surface water pond in Rier village used as a drinking source.

Test results from Cropnuts, a certified water testing company in Kenya, found high levels of aluminum, potassium and sodium, as well as traces of lead. High levels of aluminum were also found in the canal and the surface water pond where locals were seen washing and drinking.

Petronas did not comment on the findings.

Three hydrologists interviewed by Bloomberg said the high aluminum concentration was highly likely to be linked to oil drilling.

The Rier village pond shows characteristics of industrial wastewater and should not be used by locals for any direct consumption, said one of the hydrologists, who works for the UN and requested anonymity because they weren’t authorized to speak to the media.

The analysis fits with what local officials and community leaders have been saying for years.

In all, just 86 of Koch County’s 146 boreholes are functional, said Tut, the health director. Locals have stopped using all four boreholes in Rier village, the closest settlement to Petronas’s oil fields. Further away, in Koch Town, only two of eight boreholes are safe to drink from, said Tut.

Efforts by the authorities in Juba to address the situation have been threadbare.

Mary Ayen Majok, a member of parliament, has called on the government to set up an independent environmental agency to study the impact of the extractive industry. A government-backed audit carried out by companies from Norway, Kenya and South Sudan took place in 2022 and 2023, she said. But since then no results have come out.

But still, locals — including a local pharmacist collecting evidence of deformities, health officials raising the alarm and mothers mourning their children — fight on.

“The local community deserves reparations and a full environmental audit,” said Kor Chop Leek, executive director of the Sudd Environmental Agency, a local NGO. “Petronas has contaminated the waterways in South Sudan and abandoned its responsibilities with flagrant disregard.”

Assists: Kyle Kim, William Wilkes
Editors: Neil Munshi, Alex Campbell
Photo and production editors: Jody Megson and Maria Wood