South Korea's state-run Korea National Oil Corp. (KNOC) Monday bought all the stakes of an oil sands mine in Canada that can produce 250 million barrels of oil, the Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Energy said.

According to a contract signed by KNOC CEO Hwang Doo-yul and Geoff Waterman, vice president of Newmont Mining of Canada, in Seoul, the KNOC pays 270 million U.S. dollars for the Blackgold Mine's mining rights and expects annual sales to reach 500 million U.S. dollars once full-scale production commences in 2010.

The Blackgold Mine in the Cold Lake region of Alberta will allow South Korea to extract 30,000-35,000 barrels of oil per day for the next 25 years, the ministry said.

South Korea currently produces 115,000 barrels of oil daily from local and overseas oil fields.

The country set a target to raise the self-sufficiency level from around 4 percent at present to 18 percent in 2013.

Oil sands, also referred to as tar or bituminous sands, are deposits of bitmen trapped in a mixture of clay, sand and water. They are in essence sand or sandstone containing at least 10 percent petroleum.

There are estimated to be 175 billion barrels of petroleum that can be extracted from oil sands mines around the world, and Canada has the world's second-largest reserve of oil sands after Venezuela.

Source: Xinhua