Oil Exploration Firm: South Korea’s Offshore Prospects Hold Great Potential

The oil and gas exploration prospects offshore South Korea have great potential and a future discovery is “highly prospective,” according to the founder of a petroleum exploration firm that advises the Asian country’s government on the drilling potential off its east coast. 

South Korea’s President Yoon Suk Yeol endorsed earlier this week a plan for drilling off the east coast of one of the world’s largest oil and gas importers, to explore what studies say are potentially vast resources of crude oil and natural gas.    

The area could contain 14 billion barrels of oil and gas, the president told a press conference on Monday.

Yoon was citing a study about the resource potential off South Korea’s east coast. The study has been reviewed by industry groups and experts, the president said.

“The prospects identified show great potential ... for hydrocarbon,” Vitor Abreu, co-founder and adviser of petroleum exploration firm ACT GEO said at a news conference on Friday, as carried by Reuters.

“So to summarize ... the basin is highly prospective,” said Abreu, whose company has been hired by Korea National Oil Corporation (KNOC) to review the geo and seismic data of the prospects.

The initial survey results have already attracted the attention of “important international companies,” South Korea’s Yonhap agency quoted the executive as saying.

South Korea hopes to begin drilling at some point at the end of this year and to find resources by the middle of next year. Commercial production is targeted for 2035 for the exploratory prospects, the larger part of which are estimated to contain natural gas.

South Korea imports nearly all the fossil fuels it consumes, so domestic production of oil and gas could go a long way to meet some of the demand.

The country is the fourth-largest importer of crude oil and natural gas in the world, KNOC says. South Korea is also the world’s ninth-biggest energy consumer.

By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com

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