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SEOUL, Oct 9 (Reuters) - State-run Korea National Oil Corp (KNOC) said on Friday it was eyeing five to ten oil companies overseas, each producing 50,000-100,000 barrels per day, for a possible acquisition "soon".
"We will make an acquisition soon," KNOC CEO Kang Young-won said in a parliamentary audit, without elaborating.
A KNOC statement submitted to the parliamentary audit said for such acquisition, KNOC had been in talks with management teams, conducted asset due-diligence and submitted preliminary proposals.
Kang also said KNOC and its partners would complete raising 1 trillion won ($860 million) in funds overseas by end-October, which would help ease any concerns about the financial impact of its investments.
South Korea, the world's No.5 crude oil importer, said last year it would invest 19 trillion won in KNOC to help the firm raise daily production capacity six times to 300,000 barrels by 2012.
KNOC said in the statement it was currently producing about 72,000 bpd from a total of 10 domestic and overseas oil fields.
The statement said KNOC considered this year to be the right time for acquisitions as global stock markets had weakened due to the financial crisis.
KNOC had prioritized regions in the order of Middle East, central Asia, South America, Australia and other Asian countries, Russia and Western Africa, it said.
In February, KNOC agreed to pay half of the $900 million price tag for a 50 percent stake in Petro-Tech, owned by private U.S. firm Offshore International Group, which has shallow-water offshore blocks in Peru covering more than 5 million acres.
KNOC also pursued a bid for Swiss oil explorer Addax Petroleum Corp. but was trumped by Sinopec, China's top oil refiner, which agreed to buy Addax in June for $7.24 billion.
The KNOC statement said South Korea had a total of 168 million barrels of oil stocks, equivalent to consumption for 175 days, at end-August. Of the total, which excluded 38.7 million barrels of international cooperative oil stocks, the government held 82 million barrels through KNOC, and the remainder was held by private firms.
The Korean government will buy about 19 million barrels more by 2013 to meet its target of holding 101 million barrels of oil stocks by the year, the statement said.
The government, which has facilities to stockpile a maximum of 139 million barrels of oil at nine domestic sites, plans to expand its storage capacity to 146 million barrel by 2011 under a three-step national oil reserve plan running from 1980 through 2011.

($1=1163.0 Won)

(Reporting by Cho Meeyoung; Editing by Lincoln Feast and Muralikumar Anantharaman)

((meeyoung.cho@thomsonreuters.com; +82 2 3704 5653; Reuters Messaging: meeyoung.cho.reuters.com@reuters.net)) Keywords: KNOC AUDIT/ (If you have a query or comment on this story, send an email to news.feedback.asia@thomsonreuters.com)

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