The Fair Trade Commission yesterday maintained its earlier resolution to slap a fine of NT$6.5 million (US$203,125) on each of the nation's two top oil refiners for price collusion, a ruling that aroused strong discontent in the punished parties.
The commission decided in a meeting last October that Chinese Petroleum Corp (CPC,
Refusing to accept the punishment, both companies appealed to the Cabinet to overturn the decision. The Cabinet's deliberation committee responded in May that although the commission's decision was not made without evidence, it could reconsider the amount of the fine.
At a second panel meeting yesterday morning, the commission ruled that the companies' fine of NT$6.5 million each remains unchanged because they violated Article 14 of the Fair Trade Act (公平交易法). However, CPC and Formosa Petrochemical are entitled to file lawsuits against the decision, as stipulated in the law.
CPC, which controls about 70 percent of Taiwan's oil market, said it cannot comment on this ruling up to and until it receives the official document from the commission.
Formosa Petrochemical, however, issued a two-page statement expressing its dissatisfaction on the commission's "unreasonable" ruling.
"We will follow legal procedures to file a lawsuit and do not rule out the possibility of refusing to pay the unreasonable fine," Su Chi-yi (蘇啟邑), the company's executive vice-president, said in the statement.
Separately, CPC yesterday said it will delay resuming production at a petrochemical plant damaged by fire by about a month because repairs are taking longer than expected.
``We're going to restart the plant around the end of
August,'' Chuang Po-hsiung (莊博雄), head of the company's petrochemical
division, said in phone interview today. ``Production is expected to return
to normal in early September.''
A fire broke out at the company's No. 3 naphtha cracker on July 1 while the
company was restarting the plant after a one-month maintenance shutdown. The
company had planned to restart the plant within a month of the fire.
Supply to customers will return to normal once production at the cracker
resumes, Chuang said. The refiner cut petrochemical
supply by as much as 20 percent after the accident at the plant, which can
produce 230,000 metric tons of ethylene a year.
Repairs are taking longer than expected because some pipes damaged by the
fire have to be replaced, Chuang said.
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