Energy cooperation between Gazprom and N.Korea

Russia's gas giant Gazprom has held energy cooperation talks with secretive North Korea, the company said in a statement on Wednesday. North Korean Minister of Oil Industry Kim Hui Yong met with Gazprom Chairman Alexander Ananenkov to discuss cooperation on oil and gas and other bilateral issues, the statement said. The visit by the Gazprom delegation was agreed in June at a meeting between Gazprom President Alexei Miller and North Korean Ambassador to Russia Kim Yong Jeh. In 2009, Gazprom and South Korea's Kogas agreed to consider gas supplies to South Korea, the world's second largest liquefied natural gas buyer after Japan. The construction of a pipeline through the North Korean territory to bring Russian gas from the Sakhalin-Khabarovsk-Vladivostok transportation system to South Korea has seemed the most efficient project but the idea was postponed indefinitely as relations between the two Koreas soured. Russia and North Korea share a border, but their trading relations worsened after the collapse of the Soviet Union 20 years ago. Seoul has developed an alternative fuel imports route involving transportation of LNG by sea directly from Vladivostok. Russia expects to start gas supplies to South Korea in 2017 with deliveries of no less than 10 billion cubic meters a year. Currently Gazprom sells about 1.5 billion tons of LNG annually to the country.