Posted on Dec 21st

The death of North Korea’s Kim Jong-Il over the weekend, and the uncertainty surrounding the transition of power to his youngest son, Kim Jong-Un, has raised new questions about a project to pipe natural gas from Russia across the secretive state to its southern neighbor.

Since the Monday announcement of Kim’s death, South Korean officials and government agencies have been focused on what impact it will have on financial markets and political and commercial negotiations.

Officials at the South Korean Ministry of Knowledge Economy, responsible for energy, industry and commerce, and state-owned Korea Gas, however, declined to comment on the pipeline project.

Russian gas giant Gazprom and South Korea’s Kogas first agreed to a 30-year supply of up to 10 billion cubic meters/year of Russian gas in 2008, with the startup of supplies marked for 2015.

Both Gazprom and Kogas saw a pipeline that runs across North Korea as the preferred delivery option. Talks, however, stalled over North Korea’s controversial nuclear program.

To read the whole article at  Platts