OREANDA-NEWS. February 24, 2012. Korea Gas Corp decided to buy a 362.3 billion Korean won (US3.04 million) stake in a Malaysian registered company, Kor-Uz Gas Chemical Investment Ltd, to participate in a project in Surgil, Uzbekistan.

After the purchase, Korea Gas Corp will hold a 45% stake in the Kor-Uz, while South Korea's Honam Petrochemical Corp will have a 45% and STX Energy will hold a remaining 10%.

In February 2008, Uzbekneftegaz and South Korean consortium created a joint venture UzKorGasChemical for construction of the Ustyurt Gas-Chemical Complex on the base of Surgil deposit. The consortium included Kogas, Lotte Daesan Petrochemical Corp. (in 2009, it was replaced with Honam Petrochemical), LG International Corp., SK Gas and STX Energy.

The project with the cost of USUS.1 billion, along with the loans for creditors, will be also financed due to own resources of Uzbekneftegaz for USUS0 million and loan of the Fund for reconstruction and development of Uzbekistan for US0 million.

In 2009, Samsung Engineering (South Korea) and Uzbekneftegaz’s UzLITIneftegaz developed preliminary feasibility study of technological part of the project, which envisaged construction of the complex with the capacity of 4.5 billion cubic meters of gas and production of 400,000 polyethylene and 100,000 tonnes of polypropylene.

Uzbekneftegaz is conducting gas-field construction of Surgil field with its own forces. The field will annually supply 3 billion cubic meters of gas to the Ustyurt Gas-Chemical Complex. Another 1.5 billion cubic meters of gas will be supplied to the complex from other fields in Ustyurt region.

Surgil field was opened in March 2006 and now it is developed by Uzbekneftegaz. Its reserves, according to the Uzbek side, make up about 120 billion cubic meters of gas.