Gastech was launched in 1972 in London and has since moved around the world, visiting countries as diverse as Qatar, Malaysia, United States of America, Thailand, United Arab Emirates, Germany and the Netherlands. It is with great anticipation that the event now announces its next destination for 2014: Seoul, the capital of South Korea, which will play host to Gastech for the very
first time.
As one of the world’s largest consumers of Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG), one of the world’s fastest-growing economies, and a key global producer of a vast number of the world’s oil & gas tankers, South Korea has major strategic and economic importance at the very heart of Asia’s growing demand for gas.
With neighbours including China, Japan and Russia, South Korea is surrounded by many of the world’s most important players in natural gas and LNG export & import, and influential over many of the global suppliers and project developers that work in the region.
South Korea imports vast quantities of gas from countries including Australia, Qatar, Malaysia, Russia, Brunei, Indonesia and Yemen. The quantity of LNG imported into Korea positions KOGAS as the world’s largest single buyer of LNG – and natural hosts for an event as internationallyimportant as Gastech. Shipbuilding is also a major business, with South Korea leading the world in tanker construction, with about 70% of international orders on the order books.