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A consortium of five Korean companies -- the Korean National Oil Corporation, (KNOC) Samsung Corporation, LG International, Daesung Industrial and SK -- have signed an agreement with Kazakh national oil company KazMunaiGas (KMG) to prospect for oil in the Caspian Sea, KNOC announced Friday.
Under it, the consortium would conclude share-transfer and management agreements with KMG by the end of the year, with the exploration contract going into effect later. The national oil corporations of both countries concluded a protocol to jointly develop a field in the Zhambyl area when President Roh Moo-hyun visited Kazakhstan in September. A joint estimate concluded that the area has large oil deposits.
A number of large oilfields, including the 60 billion-barrel Kashagan field, have been discovered in the Caspian Sea, an area dubbed "the second Middle East." A KNOC official said the site Korea has secured borders the Kashagan region, so was likely to have large oil reserves underneath it.
(Park Young-cheol, ycpark@chosun.com )
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