Korea National Oil Corporation (KNOC) is reportedly advancing a deep-sea gas field project in the East Sea by signing a drilling rig usage contract with Norway's Seadrill.
According to industry sources on the 4th, the government and KNOC signed a contract earlier last month with Norway's Seadrill, a globally renowned offshore drilling company, for the use of a drilling rig named "West Capella." The West Capella was built by Samsung Heavy Industries in 2008. The West Capella is scheduled to stay in Korea for about 40 days to fulfill the drilling contract. The contract is valued at 32 million USD and will take effect starting this December.
The government and KNOC plan to begin drilling exploration from the end of this year in the Daewanggorae gas field candidate area, spanning the northern parts of blocks 8 and 6-1 in the East Sea, by drilling long exploratory wells deep into the seabed to confirm the presence of actual oil and gas.
Authorities have preliminarily identified, through physical exploration processes aimed at detecting the possibility of oil and gas beneath the seabed, that a wide area of the sea located 38 to 100 km from Yeongil Bay in Pohang, Gyeongbuk Province, may contain large deposits of gas and oil.
The estimated resource deposits are 75% gas and 25% oil. Accordingly, if a large volume of resources is actually discovered, it is expected to take the form of a gas field with a much higher proportion of gas than oil.
Unlike the small-scale East Sea gas fields previously developed by Korea on the shallow East Sea continental shelf, this time the development requires accessing oil fields located more than 1 km deep beneath the sea surface, with each exploratory drilling well reportedly costing around 100 billion KRW.
The government received an assessment from an overseas specialized institution indicating about a 20% chance of success for this exploratory drilling. This level is considered a fairly high probability of success.
The government and KNOC selected "Daewanggorae" as the top-priority development candidate area after verifying the physical exploration analysis results received from the U.S. company Act-Geo, along with additional validation through domestic and international companies and a private expert committee.
Meanwhile, apart from securing the drilling rig that will play the most crucial role, KNOC is also preparing for the full-scale drilling operations scheduled for the end of the year by issuing contracts and placing orders for support helicopters, support vessels, submersibles, and dispatching drilling supervisors.
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