SK Corp. to firm up overseas oil projects

SK Corp., South Korea's No. 1 oil refiner, will firm up overseas projects for oil exploration and production this year.
In his new year message, SK Corp. president Shin Heon-cheol said that SK is prepared to achieve its goal of becoming a dominant energy giant producing 100,000 barrels of oil abroad a day by 2010. By so doing, he said that his company will achieve half of the oil independency target of 10 %, which the government has set for 2010.

As of now, the company is engaged in 26 overseas oil exploration and production projects in 11 countries, including Yemen, Egypt, Vietnam and Peru.
Last year the company successfully started the commercial production of natural gas in the Camisea oil field in Peru and the NC-174 block in Libya, in which the company has invested with other partners. As a result, it had secured some 300 mm barrels of crude oil, about half of the nation's annual oil consumption as of the end of 2004.

The company is ranked 30th among 200 oil explorers in US. It aims to enter the top 20 by 2010. In addition, daily oil production in overseas oil fields in which SK Corp. holds shares reached 24,000 bpd last year.
SK officials said that it will pursue oil and gas exploration projects in the Caspian Sea this year and look more toward energy projects in China. The company set up the Resource & International (RI) division to oversee all overseas businesses from the beginning of this year to further develop lucrative energy exploration and production projects overseas,