• Environmental and Resource Economics Review
• /
• v.20 no.4
• /
• pp.859-882
• /
• 2011

Since two oil crises in the 1970s, Korea has actively engaged in overseas E&P projects to increase energy diversity as well as its self-development rate of energy resources. Korea's energy self-development rate, an index that indicates the ratio of resources acquired through overseas development compared to direct imports. Currently, Korea is conducting a total of 180 promising overseas oil development projects in 36 countries as of the end of 2010. By now, it has secured a reserve of around 1.63 billion barrels and production of around 176 thousand barrels of oil per day. The self-development rate for oil rose from 2.8% in 2006 to 7.4% in 2010. Not content with these remarkable successes, the korean government is planning to raise its self-development rate in oil to 25% by 2019, by promoting the active participation of Korean companies in overseas oil development projects. This paper is concerned with estimation of the required amount of government subsidies that includes loans and financial support through state-controlled banking institutions in order to reach the target 25% rate by 2019. The estimation results shows that government subsidies of at least 268 million dollars are needed for the current rate of 7.4% in oil. However, the amount sharply increases up to 1.25 billion dollars in 2019 when domestic oil demand rises to 1.02 billion barrels.