| 摘要 | ABSTRACT
1. Necessity and Purpose of Research
With the analysis about what potential Southern African countries have for supplying energy resources, this research provides methods for Korean companies to import resources of the region or to start businesses to develop resources in Southern Africa.
This research mainly focuses on South Africa, Angola, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Namibia, Botswana, and Madagascar. While oil and natural gas have been developed in Angola, Namibia, South Africa, and Mozambique which lie on coasts of Atlantic and Indian Oceans, coal and mineral resources have been actively exploited in landlocked countries (Botswana, Zimbabwe, and Zambia), Madagascar, and South Africa. The first year of research (2011) focused on Western African countries, and Central and Eastern African countries were the study object in the second year (2012).
2. Summary
In the Southern African region, conventional bio-fuel accounts for 70-80% (South Africa represents approximately 50%). In the power sector, every country of the region faces severe short supply of electricity, and only 30% of household are connected to electricity. Countries which are blessed with hydrocarbon and produce it plan to establish the consumption structure based on oil, gas, and coal and construct the infrastructure for supply.
Crude oil of Angola will be directly exported to China and the US from the offshore FPSO. Natural gas that Angola and Mozambique are going to produce will be provided to the Asian market in form of LNG through the coastal liquefaction facility. However, there are no law and regulation for oil and gas downstream, which is likely to impede LNG development in the region. Furthermore, a reduced size of the regional market and lack of condensate are contributing negatively to retrieving initial investment cost. These problems could make the region fall behind in the competition with LNG suppliers of Australia, Qatar, and North America whose main export market is Asia.
As Shell and North American companies are planning to start shale gas development in South Africa, the South African government is hastening to put related law and regulation in place.
Southern Africa was under colonial rule of Europe relatively longer than others, so the interrelation between modern authority and conventional authority has become complicated. This institutional feature has negative impacts on foreign companies that have been developing natural resources in Southern Africa. Currently, oil and gas E&P are being actively conducted, and law and regulation regarding resource development are being made or revised.
Major and independent medium-size companies are strategically selling their shares to Asian firms in order to fund for investment, secure export market, and hedge investment risk. Moreover, unlike major companies (Shell, ExxonMobil, Total, etc.), independent companies�� operators do not have sufficient business experience and export sales network, so they sell part of their shares and leave the sales part to major companies.
With experiences of subsalt oil development, Brazilian oil companies have conducted offshore development businesses and are rapidly expanding their E&P business areas to neighboring countries.
State-owned companies of Asia implement quota participation in development business in order to secure oil and gas resources and to acquire experiences of deepwater/ultra-deepwater oil field development as well as to gain economic profits. State-owned companies of Western African countries and South Africa are entering resource development business in the Southern African region based on development technologies and experiences they gained in domestic markets.
3. Result of Research and Political Suggestions
Despite opposition opinion, Southern African countries are expected to maintain amicable foreign investment policy because their economies and governmental finances highly depend on energy resource development and export by a few foreign companies.
Each government of African countries puts its priority on solving the unemployment problem and forces resource development companies from abroad to hire a certain number of local workers.
Therefore, the number of native will be on the rise in foreign companies, and more and more conflicts or disputes are likely to arise between foreign companies and local workers. Given that workers�� collective action is significantly active especially in the Southern African region, foreign companies should improve working environment.
With local governments�� policy to attract foreign companies, it is expected that share sales between Asian companies and major and independent medium-size companies (operators of the existing fields) will be carried out consistently, and foreign companies will continuously participate in bidding for new mining area. Furthermore, exploration is projected to be quite successful in the unexplored region in the northern sea of Namibia, South Africa, and Mozambique because the region has a similar geological structure to neighboring area where exploration was conducted successfully.
Accordingly, opportunities for quota participation will be provided consistently to companies of Korea and other Asian countries. And Korean companies could explore the regions jointly with foreign companies by using cooperation network that Korea has established so far.
Korea, China, and Japan set Africa as the strategic region to diversify oil and gas import channel and expand their business to the overseas upstream sector and in particular, they focus on Mozambique in Southern Africa. China also includes Zambia and Angola, which are rich in oil and mineral resources, as its strategic partner based on its cordial relations with them in the political, diplomatic, economic, and military sectors. Japan uses Mozambique as base, expanding its business to neighboring countries as well. Therefore, Korea should pay attention to the movement of China and Japan.
African countries have a bad feeling toward China recently. If Korea wants to be rewarded in return for its assistance to African countries as China did, this will have an adverse effect. In this situation, the activity of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) would be more effective. When it comes to infrastructure business, it is hard for a single country to manage the whole business. Thus, PPP(Public Private Partnership) or Trust Fund creation with Multilateral Development Bank would be available for the management of the infrastructure business.
Finally, as for Japan, its large trading corporations are the key to the entry into the African region. This is because trading corporations have competitiveness and advantage for developing a new market. Korea��s trading corporations also have sufficient ability to exploit a new market and have a good image in Africa. Therefore, energy company and trading company need to make full-fledged efforts to seek measures to enter the African market together. |
