Showing posts with label storage. Show all posts
Showing posts with label storage. Show all posts

Sunday, January 21, 2024

DPRK's Fuel Transport and Storage Network: an Introduction

North Korea doesn't have its own domestic supply of oil and relies on legal and illicit transfers of petroleum products for its economy to function. While AccessDPRK has documented the proliferation of gas stations around the country, those exist parallel to North Korea's traditional oil storage and delivery network, which it has maintained for decades. 

Pyongyang-Kaesong Highway gas station at 38.973769° 125.719252°. Image: Wikimapia/Mar12.

In much of the world, going to your local gas station is how most individuals get fuel. There are stations for cars, trucks, and there are dedicated fueling depots used for institutions that have large fleets of vehicles like municipalities. But until recently, getting fuel in North Korea wasn't so simple.

Sixty-nine percent of the 190 gas stations identified by AccessDPRK have been built under Kim Jong Un, and even those aren't enough to cover every town and village - let alone the needs of factories, universities, collective farms, and other organizations that operate multiple vehicles and pieces of equipment.

So, most organizations still rely on an older system of refueling. 

While the specifics of how this system works remains little understood, I feel that I have been able to locate enough of the infrastructure (which is often buried underground or in hardened structures) to write an introduction to this system that serves as the backbone of fuel delivery and storage in North Korea.

To place this system in context, I'll quickly review North Korea's petroleum infrastructure.

North Korea is only allowed to legally import 4 million barrels of unrefined petroleum products and 500,000 barrels of refined petroleum products (like gasoline and kerosene) each year under United Nations' restrictions.  

North Korea imports petroleum products via ship and rail transfers as well as from a single pipeline coming from China into Sinuiju, the PRC-DPRK Friendship Oil Pipeline. North Korea has two refineries but largely relies on the Ponghwa Chemical Factory which is nearest Sinuiju. 

This map shows where North Korea's refineries and main oil terminals are located.

From its refineries and system of storage depots at key coastal terminals, legal (and an ever increasing amount of illegal) petroleum products are then transported to intermediate depots around the country. 

As mentioned, part of the fuel is sent from those terminals via rail and then truck to the country's gas stations.

But as you can see, they are not evenly distributed around the country and also only provide a limited storage capacity.

The bulk of the nation's fuel gets stored elsewhere, at facilities large and small, and can then be transported to factories, farms, and other organizations that need to fuel their own vehicles and equipment.

Map of just some of North Korea's internal petroleum storage facilities.

I currently have nearly ninety of these internal storage sites located. As mentioned earlier, most of the facilities are either underground or located within covered/hardened bunkers, making their identification difficult. Most, however, are near railways and so I believe I will be able to locate a considerably greater number of them in the future.

But with the sites that have been located, I can show each of the steps from the main terminals down to the local level.

Nampo's key petroleum depot is located at 38.720407° 125.366678°. It is one of North Korea's most important petroleum storage facilities, and also receives shipments from vessels engaged in illegal transshipment operations. 

Currently it has fifteen storage tanks for different types of refined petroleum products. The depot has grown in recent years with two new tanks added since 2019, and there is prepared space for a further twelve tanks. Two additional facilities also lie within a few hundred meters from this site.

Taedong Storage Site 39.094303° 125.615255°

From the main receiving depots like Nampo, petroleum can be shipped by rail to intermediate storage facilities. This one is near the town of Taedong, west of Pyongyang.

The Taedong Petroleum Storage Facility.

At Taedong, four large storage tanks - each approx. 20 to 25 meters in diameter - are partially set underground and are covered with large mounds of dirt.

Oil is brought to them via a pipeline from a rail terminal 750 meters away. Once inside the complex, the main line splits into smaller feeder pipelines that can fill or drain each tank independently. Taedong is one of the largest of these internal facilities and is just 1.3 km away from five anti-aircraft artillery batteries, and it is covered by several surface-to-air missile sites as well owing to its proximity to Pyongyang. 

Within Pyongyang is a large, central storage facility at 39.082890° 125.707182°.

The complex covers 12.4 hectares and contains large storage tanks like at Nampo, and smaller tanks that can be seen in towns outside of the capital and even at gas stations.

From these larger storage facilities, the fuel is then distributed via tanker trucks to their destined town or village.

One such site is in Kuum-ni at 38.898954° 127.908719°.

In this 2004 image, the individual storage tanks are visible.

Kuum-ni lies on the rail line in between Changjon and Tongchon in Kangwon Province. Its storage site comprises fifteen tanks, each 10-11 meters long.

By 2013, the tanks have been covered up.

Over time, most of the open tank facilities like Kuum-ni have had their storage tanks placed in bunkers or covered over with soil. In this 2013 image, new vent pipes are visible as small white dots.

Civilian organizations (factories, farms, etc.) have their own on-site fuel storage, and can draw from these "community" facilities. Sometimes it's a considerable amount (thousands of liters) or just a few small storage barrels, depending on their individual needs. 

The military has its own fuel supply system, and their needs are prioritized over civilian organizations. 

This system, while theoretically efficient in a country lacking internal pipelines, is also prone to abuse as local party bosses have considerable influence over the local fuel supply. And, there many opportunities for fuel to be stolen or diverted elsewhere; from black market activity to diversion for personal use, and the occasional need to 'donate' fuel back to the government, an unknown but likely large percentage of the country's fuel supplies end up being taken out of normal availability.

Regardless of the inefficiencies in North Korea's supply structure and economic policies, the country has managed to continue to import far more fuel than UN limits allow, even through the border closures brought on by the pandemic. 

Given a lack of comprehensive data about North Korea's imports, monitoring other parts of the country's petroleum infrastructure, like the growth, renovation, or demolition of storage facilities, can provide additional insight into how much the country is capable of bringing in and storing long-term. 

Petroleum storage, while not always the most interesting subject, plays a role in North Korea's ability to withstand sanctions, border closures, and any future blockade during a war. Improving our understanding of this topic can also help us to gauge the strength of its economy and its ability to manufacture a range of goods. 


I would like to thank my current Patreon supporters who help make all of this possible: Alex Kleinman, Amanda Oh, Donald Pierce, Dylan D, Joe Bishop-Henchman, Jonathan J, Joel Parish, John Pike, Kbechs87, Russ Johnson, and Squadfan.

--Jacob Bogle, 1/21/2024

Sunday, September 1, 2019

Work at the Hagap Underground Facility Continues

Hagap is a large underground facility that lies right across the provincial border in Chagang Province, near the International Friendship Exhibition (in North Pyongan Province).

Landsat/Copernicus satellite imagery shows that Hagap was constructed in 1991 (although it seems the US intelligence community didn't learn about it until 1996). By 1998, within the public sphere, Hagap was suspected of being one of North Korea's centrifuge facilities and was often mentioned in the same breath as the site at Kumchang-ni. At the time, the Defense Intelligence Agency said, "There is one site, of an unconfirmed function, that possibly could be a nuclear-weapons-related facility by 2003...The function of this site has not been determined, but it could be intended as a nuclear production and/or storage site."

Changes at the Hagap site are visible between the 1990 and 1991 images.

Hagap, as with Kumchang-ni, seems to never have been completed and certainly never became a functioning nuclear site. But questions started being raised about Hagap, specifically, despite the initial insistence by the Pentagon that it was a nuclear site. These questions were made more relevant by the fact that, after being inspected by an international team, Hagap didn't appear large enough or well suited to house a nuclear reactor or serve other related purposes.

As mentioned earlier, Hapag is near the International Friendship Exhibition, a mere 5 km away. This and other reasons (some I mentioned above) has led to some analysts calling into question its nuclear purpose. The other idea is that it's actually being turned into a massive records storage complex; Pyongyang's answer to Iron Mountain.


In 2017 I first reported on new work being conducted at both Hagap and at the IFE. The construction at both sites seems to have begun in 2016 and continues to this day. Before I get into the alternative purpose for Hagap, I want to go over these ongoing changes.


The above image shows the site as it appeared in October 2013 and after work had resumed in October 2016, after many years of apparent inactivity. The main difference is a large pile of excavated debris.


Aside from the pile of excavated material, additional areas of activity could also be seen around the site.


By 2019 what the "other activity" was turning into became clear.


The large pile of rock was in fact debris from tunneling operations to create a new entrance to the site that would allow vehicles inside. The other activity was the construction of a road that led into the facility.


The new entrance site is very clear on this April 10, 2019 image.

Access to Hagap is a small access road that comes off the Pyongyang-Huichon Highway. There is no obvious security gate or fence system that surrounds the complex. This leads me to suspect that it isn't an important nuclear-related facility. While there are coincidences in timing between construction periods at Hagap and construction periods at known nuclear sites, that's about the only similarity.

And even as a weapon's storage site, Hagap seems to be ill fitted. For one, having a central storage site for your most important weapons isn't a good idea. A major strike could wipe them all out. Secondly, Hagap is at least 50 km away from the nearest suspected ballistic missile base. Moving weapons to there from Hagap, up and down winding, unpaved roads, would leave them vulnerable to observation and attack for extended periods of time.

The other two suspected nuclear sites, Kumchang-ni (in North Pyongan Province) and Yeongjeo-ri (in Ryanggang Province) are both positioned far into a closed valley and cover large areas. They have support buildings spread throughout and have perimeter security. The same can be said for nearly all of North Korea's ballistic missile sites. And while Yongbyon isn't hidden, it is surrounded by air defense and has multiple security fences and checkpoints. Hagap doesn't have any of these things, and though it is tucked away in a valley, it only takes up a relatively small footprint, plus it's just a mile off the main highway and doesn't appear to have any military units on-site to provide protection.

Hagap does have housing but they're not typical "harmonica houses" or in barrack form (both styles dominate military housing). They're small apartment blocks next to what may be administrative buildings. And finally, work has been taken to "beautify" the area with tree-lined roads, ponds, and a lovely central building at the main entrance. On the other hand, Yongbyon looks like any factory town and the uranium plants at Pakchon and Pyongsan are plain industrial sites. Only the Kim's are worthy of a forested campus.


Whether Hagap was envisioned to be a nuclear or research facility that was later re-purposed into an archival facility or whether it was always supposed to be an Iron Mountain we may never know, but the site's rural location and it being underground mean that anything inside would be likely to survive even the most catastrophic of wars or rebellion. And with all of the "gifts" being transported to the IFE, Hagap is nearby to receive more serious cargo. After three generations, Kim Jong Un is having to save the country his grandfather created. He must also ensure that the history of the country (both official and real histories) is saved. Hagap looks to be the perfect place for that.


I'd like to thank my supporters on Patreon: Kbechs87, GreatPoppo, and Planefag.

--Jacob Bogle 9/1/2019
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