KEPCO CEO stresses overseas expansion

The state-run Korea Electric Power Corporation will try to discover new profitable markets overseas as it finds domestic market too small to increase its revenue, its CEO said yesterday.

"We have set a new vision for KEPCO for the next 10 years to become a global company with (accumulative) revenue of $76 billion," KEPCO CEO Kim Ssang-soo told reporters in Gwacheon.

"We have won nuclear reactor projects overseas which take 10 years to build the planned four reactors (in United Arab Emirates). By the year 2020, we will be able to (increase the size of the company) and build seven to eight reactors," he said.

Stressing limits in expanding business in the local market, Kim said KEPCO has to develop more overseas projects like smart grid projects and service business for operation and maintenance of nuclear reactors.

The state-run utility firm will also increase its capability to secure uranium, the main energy source for nuclear reactors.



"We have to purchase uranium worth 10 trillion won ($8.5 billion). If we could secure 50 percent of the uranium need, then we are to have another business unit worth 5 trillion won," he said during his first meeting with reporters after KEPCO consortium won a landmark $20 billion deal late last year.

The Korean consortium led by KEPCO is to build four nuclear power plants in the UAE by 2020.

Officials said it would generate an additional $20 billion in contracts for operation and maintenance over 60 years. The deal made Korea the world`s sixth country to export commercial nuclear plants after the United States, France, Russia, Canada and Japan.

Kim said he refused an offer by its French rival Areva to cooperate in nuclear reactor development, adding that he has clearly delivered his message that KEPCO will make its own way.

The Korean utility firm is eyeing nuclear reactor contracts in Turkey, Russia and Jordan, but the bidding process will take a while to begin, he said.

(christory@heraldm.com)







By Cho Chung-un