South Korea buys 611 thousand barrels of Basra Light crude

511 thousand barrels by the end of June, while the remaining quantity will arrive no later than the end of October.

The spokesman of the company, owned by the South Korean government Cho Yang-gon, said that the whole amount is from Basra Light crude confirming that data came in a statement of one of the members of parliament on Monday. No more details were available including the vendors and the prices.."

Cho said, "This strategic reserves are usually built for emergency in order to produce oil products and Basra crude Light, very suitable for refining facilities in South Korea."

He pointed out that the Korean National Oil Company imported last year 545 thousand barrels of Basra Light crude for its strategic reserves.

The fifth-largest importer of crude in the world has currently a storage capacity of 133.2 million barrels of crude oil run by Korean National Oil Company.

According to the company’s data , 92.5 million barrels is stored as a strategic reserve at the end of July, while the 24.5 million barrel were reserved through commercial contracts leases.

Iraq , the second largest oil producer in the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) has been planning to export two million barrels per day of Basra light crude in September, a level close to the level of the previous month which amounted to 1.92 million barrels per day.