SEOUL: South Korea has bought 611,000 barrels of crude oil to build up its strategic reserve this year, of which 511,000 barrels arrived by end-June, with the rest arriving by end-October, data from the inventory operator, Korea National Oil Corp, showed.
All crude is Iraqi Basra Light, said Cho Jung-geun, a spokesman at the state-run oil company, confirming the data quoted in a statement by a member of the parliament on Monday. No further details including sellers and deal prices are available.
“This strategic reserve is usually built for an emergency to produce oil products, and Iraqi Basra Light fits well into South Korean refining facilities,” Cho said.
Last year, KNOC imported 545,000 barrels of crude, also all Basra Light, for this strategic reserve, he noted. The world’s fifth-largest crude importer currently has 133.2 million barrels of oil inventory capacity run by KNOC.
As of end-July, 92.5 million barrels were stored for the country’s strategic reserve, while another 24.5 million barrels were stored via commercial leasing contracts, according to KNOC data.
OPEC’s second-largest producer, Iraq, plans to export 2 million barrels per day (bpd) of Basra Light crude in September, close to the 1.92 million bpd exported in the previous month.
