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South Korea on Thursday announced an ambitious plan to nearly triple its
self-supply rate of oil and natural gas amid U.S. pressure to cut its crude
imports from Iran.
The country's so-called self-sufficiency rate of
oil and natural gas stood at 13.7 percent of its total consumption as of the end
of last year, falling a tad short of its earlier target of 14 percent, according
to the Ministry of Knowledge Economy.
The government, mainly through
new investment and development projects by the state-run Korea National Oil
Corp. (KNOC), plans to increase the self-supply rate to 20 percent by the end of
this year and 35 percent in 2020, it said.
"Our country is the most
vulnerable among all member countries of the Organization for Economic
Cooperation and Development in terms of the safe supply of resources," the
ministry said in a press release.
"There needs to be efforts to
further increase our self-sufficiency rate to a level where it will be fully
prepared for any disruption in global supplies."
Fears of a supply
disruption were recently highlighted as the country struggles to make up for an
anticipated cut in oil shipments from Iran, which currently account for about 10
percent of South Korea's total consumption.
To help KNOC and other
companies secure additional stakes in overseas oil and gas fields, the ministry
plans to expand the amount of its payment guarantees for energy development
projects to about 3 trillion won (US$2.66 billion) by 2017.
The
government also will expand the proportion of its budget spent on energy-related
research and development (R&D) projects from the current 5 percent to 10
percent of the government's entire R&D budget, according to the
ministry.
Along with its efforts to improve its energy
self-sufficiency, the country will work to increase its self-supply of six key
mineral resources that have been identified critical to the country's economy
from the current 29 percent to 43 percent in 2020. They are bituminous coal,
uranium, iron ore, copper, zinc and nickel.
Source Text