SEJONG: The volume of South Korea’s energy imports rose nearly 8 percent on-year in the second quarter of 2015, but their value dropped sharply mainly due to weak international crude oil and coal prices, customs data showed Thursday.
According to the data by the Korea Customs Service (KCS), South Korea imported a little over 77.1 million tons of energy products, including crude oil, coal and natural gas, during the April-June period, up 7.6 percent from a year earlier.
The value of the imports, however, plunged 34.9 percent on-year to US$22.45 billion in the three-month period.
“Demand pushed up the import volume, but the country paid much less thanks to low international crude oil, coal and natural gas prices,” the KCS said.
In terms of value, energy products made up 20.3 percent of the country’s total imports during the second quarter.
South Korea imported 34.13 million tons of crude oil in the second quarter, up 17.3 percent from a year earlier. Its value, however, fell 34.7 percent to $15.4 billion. The country imported 59.6 percent of its crude oil from Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Kuwait in the period.
Coal imports came to 34.75 million tons in the second quarter, up 3.5 percent from a year before, while its value was down 16 percent to $2.7 billion.
The country’s imports of natural gas fell 8.1 percent on-year to 8.22 million tons, with the purchase price also dropping 43.3 percent to $4.4 billion.
Australia, Indonesia and Russia were the largest exporters of coal to South Korea, controlling 83.3 percent of the import volume, while Qatar, Indonesia and Oman were the top three suppliers of natural gas at 56.9 percent, according to the data.
