SK Earthon starts shipping crude oil from South China Sea

SK Earthon, a resource development subsidiary of SK Innovation, has successfully loaded and shipped crude oil produced in the offshore oilfield in China onto an oil tanker.

SK Earthon stated that it loaded and shipped crude oil produced starting September at Lufeng 12-3 oil field in Block 17/03 located in the South China Sea, onto an oil tanker. The crude oil, totaling 400,000 barrels - equivalent to around 15 percent of South Korea’s daily consumption - was extracted from floating oil production and storage facilities using both surface and sub-surface hoses and was subsequently loaded onto an oil tanker.

The 17/03 oilfield, which is about 300 kilometers away from Shenzhen, China, is where SK Earthon first succeeded in producing crude oil. SK Earthon signed a crude oil exploration agreement with China’s CNOOC in 2015 and discovered crude oil in 2018 through exploratory drilling. The company started producing crude oil in September through oilfield review and construction of the production platform. The daily production volume of the 17/03 oilfield reached approximately 29,500 barrels, based on peak oil production.

SK Group founder Chey Jong-hyun began the oil development business in earnest in the wake of two oil crises in the 1970s, starting with the company’s equity participation in the Karimun block in 1983. At the time, Chey promised the petroleum development team 10 million dollars for the next 10 years. Forty years have passed, and SK Earthon has been involved in over 100 resource development projects in 34 countries.


will@donga.com