Saudi Arabia has asked South Korean companies to participate in a new urban building project aimed at better meeting the Middle Eastern country's growing needs for clean energy, Seoul's commerce minister said Monday.

   Work on the 63-square-kilometer town located inside Riyadh began last year with the world's top oil producer pledging to build a high-tech ubiquitous city that will make extensive use of clean energy sources such as atomic power.

   "The Middle Eastern country wants Korean firms to play a role in the King Abdullah City for Atomic and Renewable Energy program," said Knowledge Economy Minister Choi Joong-kyung, who last week attended the Clean Energy Ministerial, a global meeting to promote the use of clean energy, in the United Arab Emirates.

   A deputy minister-level official will lead a delegation to visit the oil-rich country soon to discuss details on possible cooperative efforts, Choi said, without elaborating on details.

   "Local companies with extensive experience in information technology (IT) and various power and urban area infrastructure building could play a role in such a project," he said.

   While recent developments in Japan's Fukushima nuclear power station have raised the importance of safety, they have not affected a general consensus to reduce reliance on fossil fuel, the minister said.

   "With no viable alternative in sight, nuclear energy is the only way to generate commercially viable power," Choi said.

   Touching on high oil prices here, the minister said the government could take all possible steps to stem inflationary pressure, though some criticism has been raised about Seoul's role in pressuring local oil refiners to cut prices.

   "The local oil refinery sector is not a real open market since it is controlled by four companies," he said. "Because of such conditions, the government could take measures to ask refiners to do their part to help consumers."

   Apparently giving in to the government's investigation into their pricing, industry leader SK Innovation Co. and smaller oil refiners have decided to cut ex-factory prices of gasoline and diesel.

   The government is going all out to tame surging inflation, for which high oil prices are cited as one of the main culprits. In March, consumer prices jumped 4.7 percent from a year earlier, surpassing the upper ceiling of the central bank's 2-4 percent inflation target band for the third month in a row.

Source: Yonhap News (April 11, 2011)