A venture led by state-run CPC Corp, Taiwan (CPC, 台灣中油) will switch to cleaner-burning natural gas from fuel oil to run a planned US$19 billion refining and chemicals project in a final bid to win government approval after a four-year wait.
Stakeholders in Kuokuang Petrochemical Technology Co (國光石化), including the Far Eastern Group (遠東集團) and Fubon Financial Holding Co (富邦金控), have agreed to shut the company should the plant fail to get environmental approval by Nov. 17, Chen Bao-lang (陳寶郎), chairman of the 43 percent CPC-owned venture, said in Taipei.
Switching to imported gas from fuel oil produced at the refinery may increase costs by NT$7.5 billion (US$236 million) a year, he said.
“Kuokuang is paying a higher cost to protect the environment,” Chen, 67, a former CPC president, said in an interview at his Taipei office. “The company doesn’t want to be a heavy burden on society.”
A government-appointed panel comprising academics and bureaucrats has raised concerns ranging from carbon dioxide emissions to protection of endangered dolphins and conservation of wetlands. Kuokuang has pledged to use gas for 60 percent of its needs to help halve emissions, and will buy the fuel from CPC, Chen said.
CPC, Taiwan’s largest refiner, is counting on the project’s 300,000 barrel-a-day refinery and an ethylene plant to compete with rival Formosa Petrochemical Corp (台塑石化). The Kuokuang venture will help CPC make up for lost capacity when one of its refineries in southern Taiwan is decommissioned.
“Without the Kuokuang project, CPC and its customers will be half dead,” Shieh Jun-hsiung (謝俊雄), executive manager at Petrochemical Industry Association of Taiwan, said by telephone. “Formosa Plastics [Group] would be the only dominant player in Taiwan’s petrochemical industry.”
CPC has three refineries — Kaohsiung, Talin and Taoyuan — with a total daily capacity of 720,000 barrels of crude. It has three naphtha crackers with a combined annual capacity of 1.1 million tonnes of ethylene, which is used to make make plastics and chemical fibers.
The Kuokuang project will make up for capacity from the Kaohsiung facility, including a 220,000 barrel-a-day refinery and a 500,000 tonne-a-year ethylene plant, which CPC has pledged to shut by 2015 amid complaints from residents about pollution.
The venture was set up in January 2006 to build a refinery, a 1.2 million-tonnes-a-year ethylene plant and factories to produce 20 chemical products, Chen said.
Kuokuang relocated the project in 2008 to Changhua County from Yunlin County to address concerns about water usage.
The construction cost of the project may climb to NT$600 billion (US$18.8 billion) from the prior estimate of NT$400.5 billion because of increased raw-material prices, he said.
Meanwhile, Formosa Petrochemical said it had restarted a crude processing plant on Tuesday, bringing the total number of crude units back in operation to two.
Formosa Petrochemical expects to reach two-thirds of its crude processing capacity by today, spokesman Lin Keh-yen (林克彥) said by telephone.
Separately, the company is cutting its ethylene supply to customers by 25 percent this month after shutting a plant last month, Lin said.
The company had shut its 540,000 barrel-a-day Mailiao (麥寮) refinery for safety reasons after an oil leak triggered a blaze at its No. 2 residual desulfurization unit on July 25.
Formosa Petrochemical halted its No. 1 ethylene plant, which has an annual capacity of 700,000 tonnes, on July 7 after a fire.
‘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
Taiwan’s official purchasing managers’ index (PMI) last month rose 0.2 percentage points to 54.2, in a second consecutive month of expansion, thanks to front-loading demand intended to avoid potential US tariff hikes, the Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER, 中華經濟研究院) said yesterday. While short-term demand appeared robust, uncertainties rose due to US President Donald Trump’s unpredictable trade policy, CIER president Lien Hsien-ming (連賢明) told a news conference in Taipei. Taiwan’s economy this year would be characterized by high-level fluctuations and the volatility would be wilder than most expect, Lien said Demand for electronics, particularly semiconductors, continues to benefit from US technology giants’ effort
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
RSS