30-08-05 A South Korean consortium has won the right to develop two offshore oil fields in Nigeria that could contain 2 bn barrels of crude oil, the government said.
The consortium, led by state-owned Korea National Oil Corp (KNOC), KEPCO and Daewoo Shipbuilding and Marine Engineering, will hold a 65 % stake in the two oil fields, giving them control to run operations, the Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Energy said.

Other stakeholders are India's Oil and Natural Gas Corp and a local Nigerian oil company.
The KNOC-led consortium beat such competitors as ExxonMobil and Shell to win the development bid, the ministry said.

The two fields, designated OPL 321 and OPL 323, are estimated to contain 1 bn barrels of oil each. This is 2.5 times greater than South Korea's annual oil consumption of 800 mm barrels as of 2004.
The state-run oil corporation and its partners plan to sign a production-sharing agreement with the Nigerian government in September, with full-scale exploration and development to begin in 2006.