10-year Resources Development Plan Finalized
The Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy has finalized its resources development plan for 2020 to 2029. The 10-year plan is established every five years, but the establishment remained suspended for five years until recently.
The latest plan is to restructure public enterprises in the sector, such as Korea National Oil Corp., Korea Gas Corp. and Korea Resources Corp., and increase the government’s investment in private-sector companies’ resources exploration projects.
The resumption of the planning has to do with the oil hegemony competition triggered by the U.S. shale revolution, the resultant increase in petroleum and natural gas supply, and the extremely low oil prices that started along with the COVID-19 pandemic. Strategic regions have been set in the latest plan, which are divided into North America, the Middle East and South and North Asian regions for petroleum and natural gas and Latin America, Southeast Asia, Indonesia and Australia for mineral resources.
In the plan, the government proposes a new policy goal covering resources security. This is because more and more countries are strengthening their energy security based on energy nationalism and trying to obtain more key resources in relation to Industry 4.0.