Leader of Green Growth, New Energy

GS Caltex Chairman Hur advocates green growth and new energy at G20 Biz Summit to prepare for climate change

Chairman and CEO Hur Dong-soo of GS Caltex Corp. has been making headway in the domestic business community as a business owner who is also a professional business manager.
The chairman’s outstanding qualification is that he majored in chemical engineering at a university in the United States, worked for a time in the U.S., and then returned home to work for GS Caltex for over 40 straight years, becoming an expert in energy.
The chairman has been notable for making daring facility investments in an installation industry, which the oil refining industry is known as, and in R&D activities with a far-seeing insight, launching new growth business areas and quickly grappling with changes in order to move GS Caltex far ahead of the rest of the industry.
GS Group is led by five sons of the late Hur Joon-koo, the honorary chairman of LG Construction, who was the third of eight sons of the late Hur Man-jeong, who co-founded LG Group jointly with the late Koo In-hoe.
The GS Caltex chairman is the third of the five sons. He graduated from Yonsei University with a degree in chemical engineering and went on to study at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. He worked for Chevron as a researcher in the U.S. and returned home in 1973. He joined Honam Oil, whose name was later changed to GS Caltex. He led the oil refinery to export refined oil products in the 1980s and to the winning of the $200 million Export Tower award in 1983, with half of its sales now coming from exports.
The world trend to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by cutting down on the use of fossil fuels tended to reduce sales of oil products for oil refineries. But GS Caltex invested 1 trillion won in oil refining facilities last year alone, unfazed by the world trend, and increased investments in new recycled energy research after Hur decided to foster the secondary battery material and bio-fuel sectors as new growth engines.
In 2006, GS Caltex set up a new recycled energy research center, and this year the oil refinery launched the new energy business headquarters directly under the chairman to show its strong emphasis on the development of new energy and new materials. The oil refinery has been stressing that fossil fuel will continue to be the mainstay energy source for the time being, so long as its demand persists, but research for new green energy sources have to be pursued in order to be prepared for climate change along with boosts in energy effects to create jobs in green areas.
Hur is chairman of the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) and successfully led the effort to bring the council’s general conference to Seoul in 2012. The council is the top organization as far as the public confidence in the area of sustainable development and influence are concerned. The council was to hold the next meeting in the U.S., but Hur was instrumental in bringing its general conference to Asia.
When the conference is held in Korea and Korea becomes the Asian branch of the WBCSD, various business models and visions on green growth will originate from Korea.
Hur will attend the G20 Business Summit as chairman of the KBCSD and meet with such leading world figures in the area of energy saving and green growth as Chairman Lakshmi Mittal of Arcelor Mittal and others to talk about boosting energy effects and savings.
He will introduce GS Caltex’s green growth and greenhouse gas reduction efforts and results and will also exchange opinions on means for sustainable growth while facing climate change.
Industry sources said Chairman Hur will be known as “Mister Energy” following the G20 Business Summit, going a step further from his well-earned nickname, “Mister Oil,” as a more than 40-year veteran of the oil industry.
Since its inception, he has been the driving force behind the growth and development that has led to GS Caltex becoming the world-class corporation it is today. With his outstanding international business sense and insights into global business trends, he has led the company along a path of successful business diversification and large-scale facility investments.
He has led corporate innovation activities since the late 1980s and established a performance-based culture, which left GS Caltex ideally placed to secure competitiveness when Korea’s petroleum industry became deregulated and open to free market competition. Moreover, he has conducted proactive management activities to advance into new business sectors like city gas, electric power, exploration and production, and new & renewable energy. These actions have secured long-term, stable revenue sources. nw

Chairman Hur Dong-soo of GS Caltex Corp.