By NNN-Xinhua
Seoul : Iraq has issued a warning, saying that it may cut off oil exports to South Korea unless South Korean energy companies halt oil exploration in the Kurdish region, South Korea’s Yonhap News Agency reported on Monday.
The Iraqi government has given SK Energy Co., a leading South Korean refiner, the warning by phone, demanding SK Energy to halt the exploration as it did not get permission from Baghdad, the state-run Korea National Oil Corp. (KNOC) said.
SK Energy is a leading participant in a South Korean consortium led by the KNOC that signed a output-sharing deal with the Kurdistan autonomous government in November, Yonhap said.
The South Korean consortium signed the agreement to take over a 38 percent stake in the Bazian oil field in the Zagros Basin in northern Iraq, which is estimated to hold 500 million barrels of crude oil, Yonhap said.
The consortium plans to set up a local representative office in January with detailed exploration and drilling planned for 2010, it said.
South Korean government has convened a meeting of oil exploration companies to review Iraqi government’s request and the follow-up measures.
As of October, South Korea had imported 37.12 million barrels of crude oil from Iraq, accounting for 5.2 percent of the total oil import in the first 10 months of the year, Yonhap said.