* Some exports may be easier to ship via Kenya - official
* South Sudan to declare independence on Saturday
By Alex Dziadosz
JUBA, Sudan, July 7 (Reuters) - South Sudan has talked to Toyota Kenya about the possibility of linking to a proposed regional oil corridor to help export crude from fields far from the north, a southern energy official said on Thursday.
The south, which will declare independence on Saturday, produces about three-quarters of the country's roughly 500,000 barrels per day of oil output but must ship its exports through pipelines in the north to Sudan's only oil terminal.
Arkangelo Okwang, the southern government's director general of energy, said some new discoveries might be easier to ship through neighbouring Kenya than through the existing pipelines.
"You can see a block, like block B, it's very close to Kenya compared to other blocks down there that go to Port Sudan. So Port Sudan would be very far for us to send new discoveries out to Port Sudan," he said in an interview.
"So we think we have the right to build more infrastructure including pipelines to neighbouring countries for other discoveries."
He put the cost of building about 1,400 km (875 miles) of pipelines and other infrastructure necessary for the regional corridor at around ${esc.dollar}1.4 billion to ${esc.dollar}1.5 billion.
Toyota Kenya, owned by the trading arm of Japanese automaker Toyota Motor Corp <7203.T>, has conducted studies for the corridor on the Kenyan side, aiming to ship to the port of Lamu, Okwang said.
"We have been in contact from time to time with Toyota Kenya," he said.
"They are talking of a corridor -- it's a big corridor, about six kilometres wide that would include the railway, the roads, of course the marine terminal in Lamu, the optic fibre" and possibly refineries, he said.
"We still need to sit down with the Kenyans to talk on the economics of it and make sure we all have a balanced benefit from the corridor."
Okwang declined to give a timeline for the project, saying it would depend on factors including the development of some of the south's fields.
Southerners voted to separate from the north in a January referendum promised in a 2005 peace deal that ended decades of civil war between the two sides.
The conflict, waged over religion, ethnicity, ideology and oil, claimed an estimated 2 million lives.
The two sides have yet to work out a number of contentious issues ahead of the secession, including how to manage the oil industry after the split and where to draw the common border. (Editing by Dale Hudson)
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
