Major Issues and Strategies of the Korea-Russia PNG (Pipeline Natural Gas) Project

초록

The Russian Far East can provide a feasible opportunity for Northeast Asian economic cooperation, because a realization of common economic interests in the region can pave the way to mutual confidence-building, which is a prerequisite for a stable regionalism. Due to the inherent characteristics such as an imbalanced power structure among nations and passivity toward institutional cooperation, the Northeast Asian region, it should be taken into account, has an apparent limitation in that future internal economic cooperation can only be pursued by completely non-political approaches aiming at minimal institutional integration. Furthermore, it would be even more unrealistic to expect normative integration on certain collective goals in Northeast Asia. Accordingly, a reasonable alternative in this situation would be sectoral economic cooperation and integration that contains minimal institutional elements and attains the normative goal of securing regional stability. This point makes the design of a Northeast Asian Energy Community more persuasive as an alternative to regional economic cooperation. For the Northeast Asian Energy Community, Russia’s proactive participation is essential. Since Northeast Asia has a complementary economic structure in which the region can have a comparative advantage based on Russia’s energy resources, it can be said that Russia provides a basis for sectoral integration centered on energy. If we go further, we might conclude that this is the only cooperative medium for Northeast Asia’s regional economic integration. It should be always noted that economic cooperation is the most practicable measure to resolve the complicated historical legacies between countries as well as the conflicts of superpower political interests. The Russian Far East’s energy resources can make this region lead the Northeast Asian community consisting of Korea, China, and Japan, all of which have a great demand for energy, and the region, a key point of railway and port traffic, can be - 48 - developed into a hub connecting the Eurasia economic zone and the Asia-Pacific economic zone. Korea and Russia can benefit greatly from Northeast Asian multilateral security bodies. Considering their various locational factors and policy convergence, the two countries need to take the initiative in developing the Russian Far East region. In this context, the Korea-Russia PNG Project can be regarded as an important project paving a way not only to development of the Korea-Russia economic cooperation but also to establishment of the Northeast Asian energy community. The key point of Russian PNG project is inducing 7.5 million tons of Russian natural gas a year through the pipeline via North Korea during 25 years starting from 2017. The scale of 7.5 million tons corresponds to 22% of domestic LNG consumption as of 2011. So this project is expected to make a big contribution to reducing the unit cost of natural gas, diversifying the origin, and fortifying Korea’s energy security. According to an estimation of the Korea Gas Corporation, the transit cost per unit will be lowered from 0.94 to 0.31 USD. In terms of energy security, this project can diversify the origin of natural gas import and secure a stable network of supplies during 30 years. As of 2010, the levels of Korea’s gas reliance on imports from abroad are 44.5% from the Middle East, 31.3% from the Southeast Asia, and 8.8% from Russia. While the scale of Korea’s gas consumption a year is 43 billion ㎥(approximately 32 million tons) as of 2010, 14.3 million tons (45%) of this are imported from the Middle East countries such as Qatar, Oman, Yemen, and Egypt and the rest is imported from Asia(Malaysia, Indonesia, Sakhalin in Russia, Brunei etc) and Australia. If Russian gas is imported through the Russia-Korea gas pipeline since 2017, the level of Korea’s gas reliance on Russia would be heightened up to 27.3%(9 million tons from Russia out of total gas import of 32.92 million tons). A reason why this gas pipeline project has got attention periodically since the 1990s is its expected economic pay-off and political ripple effects that all parties involved, Russia, South Korea, and North Korea, would secure both during and after the process of construction. In other words, this project would take a characteristics of a ‘win-win- win’ strategy to all three countries.