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East Sea-1 Gas Field Celebrates One Year of Commercial Production

East Sea-1 Gas Field Celebrates One Year of Commercial Production

Posted July. 12, 2005 03:15,   

한국어

The East Sea-1 gas field is celebrating its first anniversary of commercial production.

The gas field began commercial production on July 11 last year, making Korea the 95th oil producing nation. East Sea-1 produced 17.3 billion square feet of natural gas (400,000 tons of liquefied natural gas), enough for an average of 340,000 households a day, and 420,000 barrels of crude oil, enough to fuel 20,000 automobiles a day, last year.

The natural gas and crude oil from East Sea-1 was provided to households and plants in Ulsan and the Gyeongnam area.

The Korea National Oil Corporation announced Monday that East Sea-1 has a total of 250 billion square feet of natural gas (5 million tons of LNG), and two million barrels of crude oil in storage. Approximately 400,000 tons of LNG is scheduled to be provided to Ulsan and the Gyeongnam area annually for 15 years, saving up to 1.5 billion dollars in imports.

That amount translates into 4.3 trillion won in gross production, 1.9 trillion won in added value, and 34,000 more jobs.

East Sea-1 also successfully passed a difficult “long-term production capacity confidence test” last July without any halting of operations.

In addition, the gas field is equipped with and has been successfully operating the “underwater oil well completion method,” a high tech system of installing an undercurrent matter control system underwater, without making any additional sea equipments. Even foreign oil companies with a high level of technology are hesitant to adopt this technology-intensive system.



Jae-Rak Jeong raks@donga.com