MOSCOW, Sept. 22 (UPI) -- Russia and South Korea have signed $4 billion worth of oil deals during President Roh Moo-Hyun's visit to Moscow, the Moscow Times said Wednesday.
The contracts were signed Tuesday at meetings between President Roh and Russian President Vladimr Putin at the Kremlin, the newspaper said. The biggest deal was a $3 billion project to create an oil refinery and petrochemical plant in Tatarstan signed between the LG Group, South Korea's second-largest industrial cartel and Tatneft, the sixth-largest oil producer in Russia, the paper said.
Trade between Russia and South Korea is booming and grew by more than 50 percent in the first half of 2004, the Moscow Times said. The trade turnover between the two countries in 2003 was $4.1 billion, it said.
Putin told Roh, "Our economic relations are developing very actively," according to an official Kremlin transcript reported by the Moscow Times. "In this area we managed to remove all barriers and all difficulties which have complicated our cooperation. Today not one problem of that sort exists."
Russia is the world's largest exporter of natural gas and second largest exporter of oil, while South Korea is the fourth largest energy importing nation on Earth.
