| Korea National Oil Corporation 한국석유공사 Hanguk Seogyu Gongsa | |
| Type: | Public |
| Location: | Ulsan, South Korea |
| Area Served: | Canada China Indonesia Kazakhstan Nigeria Peru Russia South Korea United Kingdom Venezuela Vietnam Yemen |
| Key People: | Dong Sub Kim, President and CEO |
| Num Employees: | 1,272 (2012)[1] |
| Revenue: | US$2.51 billion (2019)[2] |
| Industry: | Petroleum |
| Net Income: | US$80.3 million (2019) |
| Assets: | US$16.18 billion (2019) |
| Equity: | US$518.4 million (2019) |
| Products: | Oil, gas |
Korea National Oil Corporation (KNOC) is the national oil and gas company of South Korea and one of the most important industrial companies in the country.[3] The company has operated and continues to operate oil and gas fields in Vietnam,[4] Peru,[5] Indonesia, Nigeria,[6] Yemen,[7] Kazakhstan,[8] Russia, China, Canada[9] Venezuela,[10] the United Kingdom and South Korea.
The company has oil reserves of around 600Moilbbl[11] and gas reserves of 10 billion m3.
On 26 September 2008, KNOC signed a deal with the Kurdistan Regional Government where KNOC was granted rights to explore and drill on several sites in the Iraqi Kurdistan in exchange for valuable support on a range of infrastructure projects.[12]
In 2009, the company purchased Harvest Operations for US$1.7 billion, along with its subsidiary North Atlantic Refining and its refinery in Come By Chance, Newfoundland and Labrador. It also assumed Harvest's US$2.2 billion in outstanding debt.[11] [13] [9] The US$3.9 billion bid was one of KNOC's largest deals at the time. That same year, the company acquired a 50% stake in privately held Petro-Tech, an oil firm with offshore assets in Peru.[14]
On 2 July 2010, KNOC confirmed preliminary discussions regarding a US$2.9 billion offer for the entire issued and to-be-issued share capital of Aberdeen-based Dana Petroleum.[15] [16] In September 2010, Dana's management had continued to reject the takeover approach, but 64% of shares had already been bought by KNOC.[17] [18] [19] The takeover was official in October 2010, when KNOC secured 90% of Dana Petroleum's shares by going straight to the shareholders. The action led to the resignment of the chairman and three non-executive directors from the board.[20]