South Korea’s four oil refinery and three petrochemical companies added 32 percent in their cash hoard from a year ago to record a combined 8.59 trillion won ($7.5 billion) thanks to explosive a 651 percent jump in operating profit from low crude prices. They are readying to shop for merger and acquisition targets and expand with their newfound riches.

Industry leaders SK Innovation Co. and LG Chem Ltd. are each planning to expand overseas operations and battery and water filter manufacturing facilities. S-Oil Corp. plans to create a new petrochemical facility in Ulsan, Korea. Lotte Chemical Corp is also drawing up multibillion-dollar investment outline to build an ethane cracker plant in the United States as well as complete purchase of chemical units from Samsung Group.

SK Innovation with cash reserves and liquid assets of 3.02 trillion won is looking for another successful joint-venture like the one it turned out with Sinopec of China under the order its vice chairman and chief executive officer Chung Cheol-gil.

Wuhan Ethylene Corp. was created by SK Global Chemical, subsidiary of SK Innovation, and China’s largest state-run energy company Sinopec in 2013 based on 35:65 stake ratio. The joint venture started production in 2014 and generated a profit of 456.0 billion won last year, more than what SK Global Chemical earned.

GS Caltex Corp., having seen cashable assets balloon 190 percent on year to 1.5 trillion won last year, maintained that it will mostly keep to maintenance and repair as it has upgraded facilities through investment of 8 trillion won until 2013. Any new major investment requires approval from its U.S. joint partner Chevron Corp.

S-Oil where Aramco Overseas Company B.V., subsidiary of Saudi Arabia’s national oil company Saudi Aramco, is the major shareholder wants to make use of its 200 billion won cash reserves to build a propylene oxide production plant in Ulsan, Korea by 2018. It will invest the first batch of 1.57 trillion won this year for the construction requiring a total of 4.79 trillion won.

Envisioning water and energy as the its growth target, LG Chem plans to focus investment to ensure it keeps the frontrunner rank in the electric vehicle battery sector by expanding facility in Europe. The company plans to add a production line - possibly in southern Poland where its sister companies LG Electronics Inc. and LG Display Co. are based - in addition to its plants in Ochang, Korea, Michigan, the U.S. and Nanging, China.

At the same time, LG Chem is also reviewing plans to expand its production facility in the water treatment sector after making inroads into the sector by acquiring reverse-osmosis water filter system manufacturer NanoH2O Inc. in 2014. The company pledged to make the unit a global leader by 2018.

Lotte Chemical whose cash and cashable assets increased 104 percent on year to 1.9 trillion won in 2015 first would have to complete the merger of chemical units that it acquired from Samsung Group. It spent 265.0 billion won in February to purchase Samsung Fine Chemicals Co. and it needs to spend additional 2.3 trillion won to take over the chemical division of Samsung SDI Co. within the first half of this year. In addition, it needs to set aside money to complete construction of an ethane cracker plant in Louisiana, the U.S. that it targets to finish by 2018. The company initially planned to take only 50 percent shares in the project that is worth approximately 2.9 trillion won but recently changed its mind to increase its stake to 90 percent.

Hanwha Group that acquired chemical units from Samsung Group in 2014 also plans to focus its efforts on generating synergy effects within the group rather than making additional investment for expansion. The total cash reserves held by Hanwha Group’s three chemical units amount to 968.0 billion won, up 27 percent on year, as of the end of 2015. But the group cannot afford new spending due to its money-losing purified terephthalic acid (TPA) producer Hanwha General Chemicals Co. It accounts for a half of local supplies of TPA whose prices are tumbling on supply glut.

By Chung Wook

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