Yoon administration's push for Blue Whale gas prospect ends in failure
Korea National Oil Corp. (KNOC) on Sunday confirmed Sunday that the Blue Whale prospect is not economically viable, a blow to the deep-sea gas project once championed by ousted former president Yoon Suk Yeol as the nation’s future energy bonanza. However, the company noted that multiple foreign investors participated in a bid for six other deep-sea gas field prospects in the East Sea, reviving a development project that had seemed like a dead end. KNOC said in a press release that it concluded an in-depth analysis of data from the first exploratory drilling into the Blue Whale prospect, one of the seven potential oil and gas reserves in the deep sea off the coast of Yeongil Bay in Pohang, and found the prospect is not economically viable. The prospect was initially expected to yield enough gas to meet Korea’s demand for the next 29 years and oil demand for four years, translating to a financial value of up to 2,200 trillion won ($1.57 trillion). KNOC conducted exploratory drilling in February and commissioned Core Laboratories, a U.S. provider of core and fluid analysis in the petrol
