State-run oil developer Korea National Oil, known as KNOC, has purchased Kazakhstan’s Sumbe in a deal valued at $335 million as part of efforts to acquire foreign oil assets to boost its reserves. KNOC has been aggressively expanding its assets in recent month to bolster the resource-poor country’s energy security. While the deal is relatively small compared with KNOC’s recent series of oil company acquisitions, it incrementally boosts the company’s presence in Kazakhstan, a Central Asian country where it already has four oil projects.

KNOC expects Kazakhstan to serve as its oil development base in the Central Asian region.
“Among the Central Asian countries, Kazakhstan is viewed as the most politically stable,” a KNOC official said. “It also offers good investment opportunities for foreign firms in terms of tax.” KNOC will continue to acquire foreign oil assets in 2010 toward reaching its crude oil output goal of 300,000 barrels a day by 2012.

The latest acquisition comes only a few months after KNOC acquired Canada’s Harvest Energy Trust for US$4 billion, in South Korea’s largest overseas energy investment to date. After the acquisition of Harvest Energy, Korea National Oil said its daily production rose to nearly 130,000 barrels, from around 70,000 barrels.