The Ministry of Knowledge Economy, part of the South Korean government, announced at the beginning of the week that a consortium of oil companies from the country had signed a deal with the Abu Dhabi National Oil Co. (ADNOC) to purchase a 40% stake in three oil drilling regions, both onshore and offshore, in Abu Dhabi.
The consortium will invest $2 billion to acquire the 40% stake; 34% of which will be controlled by the state-run Korea National Oil Corp, with the other 6% going to GS Energy. The remaining 60% of the three oil fields will continue to be controlled by ADNOC.
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The foundations for this deal were first announced by South Korea over a year ago, and form part of a plan to secure oil supplies for the future. As a part of the deal South Korea will have the ability to import 100% of the oil produced from the fields on the off chance that there is a disruption to regular supplies; ensuring that the country has guaranteed access to oil, no matter what.
The three fields have been estimated to contain as much as 570 million barrels of recoverable oil. Production is expected to begin in 2014, and could reach a maximum of 43,000 barrels a day.
By. Joao Peixe of Oilprice.com
Joao is a writer for Oilprice.com More