Imports of liquefied natural gas (LNG) fell for a fifth straight month last month after electricity demand dropped.
Taiwan is the third-biggest importer of the fuel in East Asia.
Imports fell about 37 percent to 1.09 million kiloliters, or 495,000 tonnes, compared with 783,000 tonnes a year earlier, data from the Bureau of Energy showed on Wednesday.
Taiwan paid US$264.7 million, or US$534.7 a tonne, last month, a reduction of 17 percent on a unit-cost basis from the US$641.14 a tonne in the year-earlier period, the data indicated.
That’s equivalent to about US$10.2 per million British thermal units (BTU).
Electricity sales at Taiwan Power Co (台電), the nation’s monopoly grid operator, fell 15 percent last month from a year earlier, a company newsletter said.
Generators account for about 80 percent of LNG consumption and state-owned CPC Corp, Taiwan (台灣中油) is the nation’s only importer of the fuel.
Taiwan bought 422,100 kiloliters of spot LNG from Nigeria and Equatorial Guinea last month and 130,400 kiloliters from Australia, in addition to multiyear purchases from Malaysia and Indonesia, the energy bureau said.
That compares with 536,500 kiloliters purchased a year earlier.
Malaysia and Indonesia remained Taiwan’s two largest suppliers.
Taiwan bought LNG from Australia last month for the first time since November 2007, and also from Equatorial Guinea for the first time since last November.
The country paid on average US$12.60 per million BTUs for the spot purchases last month, the report said.
LNG is natural gas that has been chilled to liquid form, reducing it to one-six-hundredth of its original volume for transportation by ship to destinations not connected by pipeline.
On arrival, it is turned back into gas for distribution to power plants, factories and households.
SPEED OF LIGHT: US lawmakers urged the commerce department to examine the national security threats from China’s development of silicon photonics technology US President Joe Biden’s administration on Monday said it is finalizing rules that would limit US investments in artificial intelligence (AI) and other technology sectors in China that could threaten US national security. The rules, which were proposed in June by the US Department of the Treasury, were directed by an executive order signed by Biden in August last year covering three key sectors: semiconductors and microelectronics, quantum information technologies and certain AI systems. The rules are to take effect on Jan. 2 next year and would be overseen by the Treasury’s newly created Office of Global Transactions. The Treasury said the “narrow
SPECULATION: The central bank cut the loan-to-value ratio for mortgages on second homes by 10 percent and denied grace periods to prevent a real-estate bubble The central bank’s board members in September agreed to tighten lending terms to induce a soft landing in the housing market, although some raised doubts that they would achieve the intended effect, the meeting’s minutes released yesterday showed. The central bank on Sept. 18 introduced harsher loan restrictions for mortgages across Taiwan in the hope of curbing housing speculation and hoarding that could create a bubble and threaten the financial system’s stability. Toward the aim, it cut the loan-to-value ratio by 10 percent for second and subsequent home mortgages and denied grace periods for first mortgages if applicants already owned other residential
EXPORT CONTROLS: US lawmakers have grown more concerned that the US Department of Commerce might not be aggressively enforcing its chip restrictions The US on Friday said it imposed a US$500,000 penalty on New York-based GlobalFoundries Inc, the world’s third-largest contract chipmaker, for shipping chips without authorization to an affiliate of blacklisted Chinese chipmaker Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC, 中芯). The US Department of Commerce in a statement said GlobalFoundries sent 74 shipments worth US$17.1 million to SJ Semiconductor Corp (盛合晶微半導體), an affiliate of SMIC, without seeking a license. Both SMIC and SJ Semiconductor were added to the department’s trade restriction Entity List in 2020 over SMIC’s alleged ties to the Chinese military-industrial complex. SMIC has denied wrongdoing. Exports to firms on the list
TECHNOLOGY EXIT: The selling of Apple stock might be related to the death of Berkshire vice chairman Charlie Munger last year, an analyst said Billionaire Warren Buffett is now sitting on more than US$325 billion in cash after continuing to unload billions of US dollars worth of Apple Inc and Bank of America Corp shares this year and continuing to collect a steady stream of profits from all of Berkshire Hathaway Inc’s assorted businesses without finding any major acquisitions. Berkshire on Saturday said it sold off about 100 million more Apple shares in the third quarter after halving its massive investment in the iPhone maker the previous quarter. The remaining stake of about 300 million shares was valued at US$69.9 billion at the end of
RSS