Taiwan’s liquefied natural gas (LNG) supply is about 71 percent covered by mid to long-term contracts, mainly with Australia and Qatar, as well as 12 other countries, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said in a report to the legislature yesterday.
Although Taiwan’s trade with Ukraine and Russia is not significant, Russia is the third-largest supplier of LNG to Taiwan, accounting for 9.7 percent of supply, the ministry said.
The nation’s LNG contract with Russia is set to expire this month, the ministry said, adding that it has already identified alternative supply sources such as the US.
Photo: Bloomberg
Taiwan currently has an LNG safety stock of 10.2 days’ supply, the ministry said.
The ministry said it would closely monitor market dynamics and hold discussions with industry players to ensure that domestic production is not affected by unstable commodity prices in the global supply chain, as the war in Ukraine seems likely to continue.
At a meeting of the legislature’s Economics Committee, Lee Shun-chin (李順欽), president and acting chairman of state-run fuel supplier CPC Corp, Taiwan (CPC, 台灣中油), said that if crude oil prices climb to US$150 per barrel, as predicted, the company would face losses of about NT$500 billion (US$17.53 billion).
Oil prices are likely to reach US$150 to US$200 per barrel later this year, as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine continues to affect international commodity markets, several foreign institutions have forecast.
CPC refines about 140 million barrels of oil per year, with 80 percent of the costs managed through the government’s price stabilization mechanism, while the firm absorbs the remaining 20 percent, Lee said.
For every US$1 increase per barrel in international oil prices, CPC would have to spend US$140 million on refining, he said.
Separately, the ministry said that the price of liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) sold in cylinders for domestic use would increase before the end of next month.
While prices of commodities in Taiwan have risen recently, the government would not permit any increase in the price of domestic bottled gas, at least for the next six weeks, in an effort to ease the financial burden on households, the ministry said.
The average retail price of a 20kg cylinder of LPG was NT$654 as of last month, the Bureau of Energy said.
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
ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip assembly and testing manufacturing (ATM) service provider, expects to double its leading-edge advanced technology services revenue next year to more than US$1 billion, benefiting from strong demand for artificial intelligence (AI) chips, a company executive said on Thursday. That would be the second year that ASE has doubled its advanced chip packaging and testing technology revenue, following an estimate of more than US$500 million for this year. ASE is one of the major beneficiaries from the AI boom as Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) is outsourcing production of advanced chip
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