Korea

ExxonMobil Corp. has secured an agreement with the world's largest liquefied natural gas buyer, Korea Gas Corp., and the country's funding arm dedicated to innovative energy research, to collaborate on natural gas technologies.

ExxonMobil Corp. has secured an agreement with the world’s largest liquefied natural gas (LNG) buyer, Korea Gas Corp. (Kogas), and the country’s funding arm dedicated to innovative energy research, to collaborate on natural gas technologies.

Wyoming Gov. Matt Meadplans to travel to Taiwan and South Korea Oct. 9-20 to seek buyers for his state’s natural resources and agricultural products. Mead will address theWorld Energy Congresstriennial meeting in South Korea. He also plans to meet with South Korean utility leaders, who reportedly plan to increase their imports of coal by 250% during the next 10 years. Mead said South Korean interests are also looking to import both uranium and natural gas from his state.

U.S. exports could prevent India from getting supplies from Iran and give European buyers leverage on their Russian pipeline purchases, a subcommittee of the House Foreign Affairs Committee was told.

Exporting U.S. energy supplies overseas to support growth in natural gas transportation in places like China and Korea makes no sense and hopefully will not happen, said Richard Kolodziej, president of NGVAmerica, the Washington, DC-based trade organization advocating vehicles powered by compressed natural gas (CNG) and liquefied natural gas (LNG).

South Korea’s Korean National Oil Corp. (KNOC) said it has joined the consortium buying El Paso Corp.’s exploration and production (E&P) business. Apollo Global Management, Riverstone Holdings and Access Industries in February agreed to pay El Paso $7.15 billion to buy the E&P unit to facilitate the company’s takeover by Kinder Morgan Inc. (see Daily GPI, Feb. 27). KNOC and a unit of Samsung Group in late 2011 bought Barnett Shale-focused Parallel Petroleum from Apollo in a transaction worth an estimated $800 million (see Daily GPI, Dec. 1, 2011).

Drilling in the Haynesville Shale helped Louisiana more than double its natural gas production in April from two years ago, and production in the Lower 48 states increased 10.6% (6.66 Bcf/d) to 69.05 Bcf/d during the same time period, according to the Energy Information Administration’s (EIA) monthly natural gas report.

Golar LNG Ltd. has contracted to build four 160,000-cubic meter liquefied natural gas (LNG) carriers with Korea’s Samsung Heavy Industries Co Ltd.

Anadarko Petroleum Corp. and a unit of Korea National Oil Corp. (KNOC) have struck a joint venture (JV) agreement that gives KNOC one-third of Anadarko’s interest in its southwest Texas Maverick Basin assets in the Eagle Ford Shale for about $1.55 billion.