| 摘要 | ABSTRACT
1. Research Purpose
Resource-poor Korea is recently highly interested in overseas resource development and securement with the trend of ��Shale Gas Revolution�� in North America. These are why unconventional resources are getting attractive to Korea;
�� Unconventional resources are abundant all over the world. It is not distributed only in Middle East and Russia, but also in North America, Australia, and Europe.
�� The E&P businesses are mainly in progress in the countries, such as North America and Australia which are have the stable political systems and low development risks.
Therefore, Korea needs to participate in the E&P businesses of unconventional resources in order to secure energy resources and pursue business diversification.
On the other hand, as the E&P businesses of unconventional resources need high investment cost, advanced technologies, more balanced business planning is essential. In particular, Korea, a latecomer with low level of technology, currently has many tasks to resolve and overcome in order to participate in this field. Moreover, the development of unconventional resources has the risk that its success or failure is dependent on the economic feasibility and technology advancement.
The background of this research is that the ways other countries over the world react to the change of unconventional resource market conditions and how Korea should respond to this circumstance.
The purpose of this research is to analyze the present condition of the unconventional resource development and its potential according to technology advancement and to suggest the implication and outlook of world E&P businesses. In addition, based on this, we are finding the policy guidelines for the active participation in the E&P businesses in the unconventional resource sector.
2. Summary
Unconventional resources mean oil and natural gas that are impossible to be produced by using the conventional technologies, because of the unique tectonic system and the uncommon form of buried areas. Unlike conventional resources that are existed in specific areas, unconventional resources are widely distributed throughout large areas, which made unconventional resources high-risk energy resource when it comes to the recovery rate and economic feasibility.
Unconventional resources can be categorized to ��unconventional oil�� and ��unconventional gas�� according to its nature. Moreover, according to its form of deposit, ��unconventional oil�� is again classified to oil sand, extra heavy oil, oil shale, and shale oil, and ��unconventional gas�� can be classified to shale gas, tight gas, CBM, and gas hydrate. In order to develop and produce these unconventional resources, the specialized technologies by resources are needed.
The reasons Korea has much interests in unconventional resources are that it buried over wide areas and that TRR is almost the same as that of conventional resources. According to IEA/OECD(2012), the total remaining oil TRR is 5,871 billion barrels at the end of 2011, and the remaining TRR of unconventional oil is 3,193 billion barrels, which accounts for 54.4% of the total remaining oil TRR. In natural gas, unconventional natural gas accounts for 41% of the total remaining TRR, 790 tcm.
Since 2003, with high oil price and technology development for producing unconventional resources, unconventional resources have lately attracted considerable attention. Actually, the shale gas revolution in North America since the 2000s is due to the technology advancement, such as horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing which enable us to approach to the shale and collect methane in a large scale.
When we consider the present condition of the reserves and production of unconventional oil over the world, the oil sand reserves is estimated to 1,880 billion barrels at the end of 2011. It is mainly buried in Canada, Venezuela, Kazahstan, Sineria in Russia, and the U.S. In particular, Canada and Venezuela have more than two third of the total oil sand reserves. Tight oil is mainly produced by U.S. The other expected tight oil reserves are the Rocky Mountains, Mexico onshore, and the U.S northeast area, and the reserve possible is estimated about 6~34 billion barrels. The oil shale reserves over the world is estimated to 4.8 trillion barrels and the 80% of the world total reserves is in the U.S. In Korea, oil shale discovered in Haenam area in Jeollanam-do, but the amount of the reserves and quality did not have enough economic feasibility. Because of its high development cost, oil shale is being developed just in few countries, such as Brazil, China, and Estonia as of 2008. Shale oil is mainly distributed throughout the U.S and the reserve possible is estimated about 24 billion barrels by each U.S shale oil play.
When we consider the present condition of the reserves and production of unconventional gas over the world, the estimated deposit of shale gas is 6,622 tcf at the end of 2011. However, Russia and Middle East are also expected to possess shale gas and its total TRR would be more than 6,622 tcf. Shale gas is particularly distributed in China, U.S, and Argentina. China has the 19.3% (1,275 tcf) of the total TRR over the world, which is the most largest amount worldwide. The U.S (13.0%, 862 tcf), Argentina (11.7%, 774 tcf), Mexico (10.3%, 681 tcf) are followed the next in order. By region, Latin America accounts for 10.3% (681 tcf) and Asia-Pacific countries (27.0%, 1,785 tcf), North America (15.7%, 1,042 tcf), Europe (9.6%, 639 tcf) are followed the next in order. The world reserves of tight gas is estimated about 7,406 tcf and its 36% is in North America and Latin America. The rest of the reserves is distributed in Europe, USSR, Africa, and Asian-Pacific regions. The CBM reserves at the end of 2011 is estimated to 1,659 tcf and it exists mainly in Russia, China, U.S and Australia. The share of each county's CBM reserves is in the following order: Russia (26.7%), China (23.2%), U.S (9.5%), Australia (9.4%), Canada (7.6%), and Indonesia (3.5%). By region, east Europe and Eurasia account for 42.6% of the CBM reserves, and Asia-Pacific countries (34.0%), North America (19.1%), Europe (4.3%) are followed the next in order. Why CBM exists in major coal-rich countries is that CBM is buried in the coal bed. That shows us the high correlation between the CBM reserves and coal reserves. However, according to the kinds of coal and its geological features, there could be a big difference in the CBM reserves, which means that the coal reserves is not always related to the large CBM reserves.
When we take a look at the aspect of technology development and business potential in the major unconventional resources, the technology advancement, such as horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing, enables shale gas to be produced more economically. As time goes and the experiences on development have been accumulated, shortening of drilling period and developing technologies, and reducing production cost have been available. Although the recovery rate has been improved through technical development, almost of the mining of shale gas remains under 15%, compared to the recovery rate of conventional gas. Therefore, the technology development for raising the final recovery rate is essential. If we improve the 50% of our current recovery rate, about 30% of cost reduction will be achieved by unit well. The recovery technology is improving continuously. In the production of shale gas, the rate of production is rapidly decreased through horizontal drilling, as a lot of gas is recovered at the initial stage. In Barnett Basin in the U.S, for example, production plateau is achieved in sixth months from the beginning of the production.
The steady research and technology development on CBM have been in progress for the last 30 years. Since the 1990s, after the large scale commercial production was launched, such countries, as Australia, China, and Indonesia, made their full effort to develop CBM. In 1971, the U.S. Bureau of Mines launched the exploration of local 11 areas. In 1977, the U.S. started the development of Black Warrior basin in Alabama. The U.S also launched commercial production in western San Juan basin and achieved a success in Australia (1999) and Canada (2000). The CBM in Asian-Pacific region still remains in the early stage, except for Australia which has produced CBM for about 15 years. While Indonesia and Vietnam explore CBM extensively, the potential of commercial production is not clear yet. Nevertheless, the rise of CBM production from 2005 to 2010 is due to the rise of CBM production in Australia.
The commercial technologies for producing oil sand are categorized to 4: cold flow, water flooding, polymer flooding, and enhanced recovery. The amount produced by using these 4 methods accounts for 15% of the total oil sand production and it will be decreased under 5% in 2030. The technology for oil sand has been proceeded, focusing on improving economic feasibility. However, the technologies to be developed in the future would be more tuned to the reduction of environmental pollution, as well as the economic feasibility.
In tight gas production, optimizing the production facilities, such as introducing the new pump facilities and compressor, resizing the tubing, and repairing the wells, helps reduce the mining operation cost and increase the production. Like the case of shale gas, the production of tight gas could be changed according to the development of hydraulic fracturing and drilling technologies. Like shale gas, unconventional resource development causes various environmental issues during the process of injecting foreign materials into the ground in order to overcome low transmissivity. Ground water contamination, surface water and soil contamination, blowout, and water resource depletion are the typical examples of the environmental issues. CBM also has the same environmental problems, such as water processing.
3. Policy Implications
In order to promote the participation in unconventional resource development, it is important to assess the investment risk of foreign countries. From this perspective, making strategy is needed based on the comprehensive analysis of foreign countries�� tax systems, infrastructures, resource reserves by region, and the amount of production and consumption. Moreover, the investment into the countries with no restraint from export is desirable. In the sector of the unconventional oil, both Canada and Venezuela are exporting most of their productions to foreign countries, and we need to investment to these countries that have more amount of export than that of import.
There are suggestions for our strategy to enhance unconventional resource development. The U.S, a leading country of shale gas development, has many E&P projects, technologies, and related infrastructures. Furthermore, The U.S is also expected to lead the shale gas development in the future. We need to select U.S as our priority and concentrate our effort to the country. Because Korean companies do not have enough technologies and experiences on this field, the assets and business M&A of shale gas with U.S companies and the establishment of joint venture could help Korea to learn the operational knowhow and technologies of U.S. After we secure technologies and experiences, we could move to the Middle East, Eastern Europe, and Africa which are evaluated to have heavy amount of shale gas.
For the CBM busuness, through the content requirements, securing stable CBM and development asset, as well as securing coal resources could be possible. In order to raise investment safety and reduce investment risks, Korea should get CBM and coal assets at the same time.
In addition, we should concentrate on high value-added businesses in the value chain, such as R&D, production, refinery, storage, and processing. Moreover it should be connected to related industry sectors, as chemical and commercial industries.
The drilling technologies, such as horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing, should be learned through strengthening R&D, the acquisition of the companies with high technology, and the establishment of joint ventures.
Currently, Korea does not have a training program for raising the man power specified into the resource development. If we have more systematic educational system, we will have higher competitiveness over the world in the field of unconventional resource development in 10-20 years.
The biggest problem that makes Korea have not enough outcomes in overseas E&P business is the lack of the capability to asset valuation. To overcome this drawback, making a database of our past businesses and projects regarding elastic wave, field development plan, and production record would be necessary.
As the ways of financial support to unconventional resource development, we need to supplement the loan process of unconventional resources in the overseas resource development loan system. As unconventional resource development and production could have the feature similar to a metal mine due to the form of resource reserves, it is not available to be evaluated as the same way as conventional resources. |
