Sudan said on Tuesday, April 17 the cost of a full-blown conflict with South Sudan would not deter it from recapturing the disputed Heglig oilfield, and that newly tapped oilfields would help to sustain its struggling economy, Reuters reported.

South Sudan took control of the contested oil-producing Heglig region last week, prompting Sudan's parliament to brand its former civil war foe an "enemy" on Monday and to call for a swift recapture of the flat savanna region.

Both countries' faltering economies will likely be important factors in the conflict's outcome.

"Despite the high cost of the war, despite the destruction that the war can cause ... our options are very limited. We can tolerate some sacrifice, until we can liberate our land," Sudan's ambassador to Kenya, Kamal Ismail Saeed, said.

"So from our side, yes, it is expensive but that doesn't deter us or that doesn't stop us from exerting all effort to liberate our land," he told reporters in Nairobi.

"We have been in war without oil for several years and we survived ... As a matter of fact ... the good news (is) we have developed other sources and fields of oil and that will really compensate our loss."

Fighting over oil payments and territory has withered the combined crude output of both countries.

The Heglig field is vital to Sudan's economy because it accounted for half the 115,000 barrels per day output that remained in its control when South Sudan seceded in July. The field's output has stopped due to the fighting, officials say.

The landlocked South had already closed its 350,000 bpd output after failing to agree how much it should pay to export via Sudan's pipelines, a Red Sea port and other facilities.