Nyeongminlee

 

Oil/Petroleum

 

About half of energy source that South Korea demands is petroleum. Total consumption of petroleum is 49.5%. 87% of crude oil (oil in natural state, not processed or refined) import is from Middle East. 31.4% of crude oil is from Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait and Qatar follow by 12.7% and 10.1%. Even though Korea has resources such as fossil fuels, it produces petroleum products from imported crude oil. It produced 159,343,000㎘ of petroleum products while imported 44,398,000㎘, and exported 64,919,000㎘. (㎘=kiloliter=1000L) S.Korea imports Naphtha (67.5%), Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG) (26.5%), and others. It exports mostly Gas/Diesel oil (39.0%) and gasoline (13.1%). (KEEI, 2014)

 

Coal

 

Second biggest energy source in South Korea is Coal (29%). It is the third largest coal importer in the world, following Japan and China. Consumption of coal in S.Korea reached to 131 MMst (million short tons) while production was under 3 MMst. Also, coal can be produced in S.Korea is anthracite. Because of that, S.Korea only depends on imported Bituminous coal. anthracite isn’t also independently consuming in S.Korea. Only 20% of consuming Anthracite is domestic coal, and it is steadily decreasing years by years. As a result, consumption of domestic coal is also decreasing while imports coal consumption is increasing. (KEEI, 2014)

 

*Anthracite VS Bituminous coal*

There are two different types of coal, anthracite and bituminous. Anthracite contains more carbon, which makes it carbonize easier. Therefore, its ignition point is high, but heating power is strong and it burns in constant temperature. On the other hand, bituminous coal contains less carbon but more volatile matter, which makes it discharge exhaust fumes and makes flames when it burns. It has high calorific value, so is used for generating electricity. (King, n.d.)

 

Natural Gas

 

17% of energy using in South Korea is natural gas. S.Korea is the second largest importer of natural gas following Japan. The volume of imported natural gas is more than 100 times domestic production. Most of imported gas is from Qatar (22.2%) and Indonesia (21.5%). Most of natural gas is consumed for city gas (51.2%) and power generation (41.5%). City Gas is mostly Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) (99.7%), and usually consumed in residence (44.3%) and industry (36.7%). (nia, n.d.)

 

Electricity

 

Electricity in Korea is mostly generated by conventional thermal power, (you heat the water and spins the turbine which generates electricity) (45.2%) and nuclear power (31.1%) and combined cycle power follow (20.4%). Also, electricity is also generated by other facilities like hydrogen power (1.8%), renewable energy (1.5%) and internal energy (0.2%). All facilities generate gradually more power except internal energy. It suggests that S.Korea can be more independent in energy economy. (Korea Electric Power corporation, 2014)

 

Nuclear Power

 

South Korea is trying to use more and more nuclear power. It takes about one third of generating electricity. The main reason is the efficiency. Compare to other sources of energy, nuclear energy is cheap and needs less area but produces more energy. The price of nuclear energy is more than 10 times solar energy, which is usually mentioned for the alternative energy. (Korean Energy Economic Institute, 2014) It takes at least 70 times less space than wind or solar energy. Its efficiency is more than 10000 times coal’s. Strictly speaking, nuclear power is also imported in Korea because it uses imported Uranium. However, the technology is independent. Nuclear power is very important in S.Korea electricity because of the high dependency. (Parker, n.d.) This is the main reason that S.Korea can’t stop nuclear plants because of the danger. Even if it takes risk, it has to maintain nuclear powers to operate the country.

 

Summary

 

There are several problems in energy economy in South Korea is first, it is a huge energy consumer and importer, and secondly, electricity generation is very dependent on nuclear power. Because it is a large energy consumer and importer at the same time, which lets S.Korea has the only option to have big dependency on import. This can be very dangerous because when it can’t get the energy from outside, its economy will be hugely damaged. Also, because dependency on nuclear power is high, when the nuclear plant has some problems or has to stop working, whole country might be blackout. South Korea should find the other way to get energy, especially renewable energy because it has almost no natural resources, therefore, the only energy source it can produce independently is electricity not generated by oil, coal or gas.

I also need to know more details about the nuclear plant in S.Korea because there are so many different opinions about it. (There were some people who said nuclear plants used old components, which let it stop working; in one year, it stopped working for several times while administrators said it’s just because of minor issue, nothing to be worried about)

 

 

 

[Bibliography]

 

Eia. (n.d.). Korea, south – analysis – u.s. energy information administration (eia). [online] Retrieved from: http://www.eia.gov/countries/cab.cfm?fips=KS.

 

King, H. (n.d.). Coal: anthracite, bituminous, coke, pictures, formation, uses. [online] Retrieved from: http://geology.com/rocks/coal.shtml.

 

Korean Energy Economic Institute. (2014). Monthly energy statistics. KEEI.Korea Electric Power corporation. (2014). The monthly report on major electric power statistics #423.

 

KEPCO.Parker, W. (n.d.). Nuclear power. [pdf] https://www.iop.org/activity/groups/subject/env/prize/file_52570.pdf [Accessed: 17 Mar 2014].