Korea National Oil Corp. (KNOC) will pursue its Ulsan oil storage hub project despite facing setbacks earlier at a similar project at Yeosu. The state firm now plans to proceed with the Ulsan project in two phases -- first building products storage and then crude storage instead of investing in both at the same time. Both projects, located at Korea's key refining sites, are part of KNOC's ambitions to develop South Korea into an oil trading hub in northeastern Asia and leverage on arbitrage opportunities with the Pacific coasts of the Americas by breaking bulk to the markets in Japan and China (IOD Feb.24'10). They also represent KNOC's first commercial oil storage projects as the firm has so far been involved only in maintaining the country's strategic petroleum reserves (SPRs).
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