Chinese Petroleum Corp (
The partners, the first state-owned oil producers from Taiwan and China to participate in a joint venture, intend to start drilling a second well in the Tainan Basin before the end of this year, said Koong Hsung-pung, director of CPC's exploration and production business division.
"The first well wasn't successful," Koong said before a business forum in Taipei yesterday. "We will use the information from the first well for the second and third wells we plan to drill."
China and Taiwan are looking for oil and gas in the Taiwan Strait as oil-import bills soar.
China spent 86 percent more in April to import oil than a year earlier, the Chinese government said on May 26. Taiwan's per-barrel oil import costs in the first quarter surged 29 percent from a year earlier. Taiwan imports almost all of its crude-oil needs.
CPC has asked the Taiwanese government to approve a second agreement with China National Offshore, Koong said. The firms plan to evaluate oil deposits off Hsinchu and have sent a draft contract to the Ministry of Economic Affairs, he said.
"We hope the government will agree to allow the two sides to start evaluating if this area is worth exploring. We hope there will be other deals" with China National Offshore, Koong said.
The companies may spend US$22.5 million to drill one or two exploration wells in the waters off Hsinchu, CPC vice president Chang Hung-chiang (張鴻江) said during the forum.
CPC and China National may also cooperate to explore for oil and gas in the East China Sea, Koong said.
The firms agreed in May 2002 to spend a combined US$25 million to drill three exploration wells to look for oil and natural gas in a 15,400km2 area between southern Taiwan and China.
Political tensions across the Taiwan Strait haven't stopped business ties from forming. Local companies, including Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (台積電), have built plants in China, where international rivals are expanding and labor is cheaper.
Stephen Garrett, a 27-year-old graduate student, always thought he would study in China, but first the country’s restrictive COVID-19 policies made it nearly impossible and now he has other concerns. The cost is one deterrent, but Garrett is more worried about restrictions on academic freedom and the personal risk of being stranded in China. He is not alone. Only about 700 American students are studying at Chinese universities, down from a peak of nearly 25,000 a decade ago, while there are nearly 300,000 Chinese students at US schools. Some young Americans are discouraged from investing their time in China by what they see
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New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last