Formosa Petrochemical Corp (
"We will send a team to Guatemala soon to look into the investment environment there," said a Formosa Petrochemical official who declined to be named.
Costs, transportation, government incentives such as subsidies or preferential loans and other conditions will be carefully evaluated by the company before making a final decision, the official said without providing a specific timeframe.
During a visit to Taiwan last month, Oscar Berger, the president of Guatemala, was given a tour of Formosa Petrochemical's Sixth Naphtha Cracker in Yunlin County, accompanied by President Chen Shui-bian (
The Guatemalan government later said that it hoped Formosa Petrochemical would invest US$7.2 billion in building an oil refinery with the capacity to produce 360,000 barrels of oil per day, along with a power station, a port and oil storage facilities, the Formosa official said.
Formosa Petrochemical produces approximately 700,000 barrels of oil per day in Taiwan.
Business risk is also one of the factors to take into account, he said.
For example, San Sun Hat & Cap Co (
Formosa Petrochemical emphasized that its evaluation of the Guatemalan projects was at a preliminary stage.
During a four-nation tour of Latin American allies, Vice President Annette Lu (
Shares of Formosa Petrochemical closed up 0.47 percent to NT$85.4 (US$2.61), outpacing the benchmark TAIEX, which lost 1.01 percent yesterday.
The private-run refiner saw its sales increase last month 17.17 percent from a year ago to NT$61.61 billion. Sales for the first six months of the year rose 14.54 percent from the same period last year to NT$293.85 billion.
Formosa Petrochemical, which is a unit of Formosa Plastics Group (台塑集團), commands about 30 percent of the domestic gasoline market. It exports about 65 percent of its gasoline for higher profits.
‘SWASTICAR’: Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s close association with Donald Trump has prompted opponents to brand him a ‘Nazi’ and resulted in a dramatic drop in sales Demonstrators descended on Tesla Inc dealerships across the US, and in Europe and Canada on Saturday to protest company chief Elon Musk, who has amassed extraordinary power as a top adviser to US President Donald Trump. Waving signs with messages such as “Musk is stealing our money” and “Reclaim our country,” the protests largely took place peacefully following fiery episodes of vandalism on Tesla vehicles, dealerships and other facilities in recent weeks that US officials have denounced as terrorism. Hundreds rallied on Saturday outside the Tesla dealership in Manhattan. Some blasted Musk, the world’s richest man, while others demanded the shuttering of his
ADVERSARIES: The new list includes 11 entities in China and one in Taiwan, which is a local branch of Chinese cloud computing firm Inspur Group The US added dozens of entities to a trade blacklist on Tuesday, the US Department of Commerce said, in part to disrupt Beijing’s artificial intelligence (AI) and advanced computing capabilities. The action affects 80 entities from countries including China, the United Arab Emirates and Iran, with the commerce department citing their “activities contrary to US national security and foreign policy.” Those added to the “entity list” are restricted from obtaining US items and technologies without government authorization. “We will not allow adversaries to exploit American technology to bolster their own militaries and threaten American lives,” US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick said. The entities
Minister of Finance Chuang Tsui-yun (莊翠雲) yesterday told lawmakers that she “would not speculate,” but a “response plan” has been prepared in case Taiwan is targeted by US President Donald Trump’s reciprocal tariffs, which are to be announced on Wednesday next week. The Trump administration, including US Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent, has said that much of the proposed reciprocal tariffs would focus on the 15 countries that have the highest trade surpluses with the US. Bessent has referred to those countries as the “dirty 15,” but has not named them. Last year, Taiwan’s US$73.9 billion trade surplus with the US
Prices of gasoline and diesel products at domestic gas stations are to fall NT$0.2 and NT$0.1 per liter respectively this week, even though international crude oil prices rose last week, CPC Corp, Taiwan (台灣中油) and Formosa Petrochemical Corp (台塑石化) said yesterday. International crude oil prices continued rising last week, as the US Energy Information Administration reported a larger-than-expected drop in US commercial crude oil inventories, CPC said in a statement. Based on the company’s floating oil price formula, the cost of crude oil rose 2.38 percent last week from a week earlier, it said. News that US President Donald Trump plans a “secondary
RSS