CPC Corp (
CPC could sign a final contract this year to buy as much as 3 million tonnes of the fuel annually, said the official, declining to be identified because of a confidentiality agreement with Woodside. Supplies could start in 2013.
Taiwan's LNG demand is forecast to rise 31 percent to 10.5 million tonnes in 2010 and to double by the end of the next decade. The nation uses LNG for more than 90 percent of its gas and is Asia's third-largest buyer of the fuel. CPC's contract may be valued at as much as US$37 billion, based on a similar agreement Woodside signed with PetroChina Co last week.
"CPC is in desperate need of LNG supplies," said Wu Tsai-yi (吳再益), a vice president at the Taiwan Research Institute, who advises the government on energy policy. "Two to three million metric tonnes a year isn't enough."
The Taiwanese oil refiner is in talks to buy 500,000 tonnes of LNG a year from Peru and Iran is another possible source of the fuel, said the CPC official, declining to name the potential sellers in Iran.
Jessica Tang (
PetroChina Accord
PetroChina, Asia's largest oil company by market value, agreed on Sept. 6 to buy 2 million to 3 million tonnes of LNG a year over 15 years to 20 years starting in 2013 from Browse, 47 percent-owned by Woodside. The project, Woodside's largest undeveloped gas asset, is set to tap about 20 trillion cubic feet of gas and 311 million barrels of condensates off the northwest coast.
PetroChina may have agreed to pay US$7 to US$9 per million British thermal units for the gas, UBS AG said in a Sept. 6 report.
"There probably won't be big differences between the CPC and PetroChina deals," Wu said.
The transaction with Asia's largest oil company by market value was worth between A$35 billion (US$28.9 billion) and A$45 billion, Woodside chief financial officer Mark Chatterji said on Sept. 6.
Woodside chief executive officer Don Voelte said on Aug. 24 that the Australian company was set to widen its range of long-term LNG customers beyond Japan, South Korea and China. The company does not have any long-term contracts to sell LNG to Taiwan.
STAKES
BP Plc, BHP Billiton Ltd, Chevron Corp and Woodside's 34 percent shareholder Royal Dutch Shell Plc own stakes in Browse. Woodside owns approximately 47 percent of the venture and is the operator.
CPC has three contracts with Indonesia and Malaysia for 5.6 million tonnes of LNG a year. A 25-year contract with Ras Laffan Liquefied Natural Gas Co -- known as RasGas -- for as much as 3 million tonnes a year, will start next year. RasGas is a Qatari joint venture with Exxon Mobil Corp, the world's largest publicly traded oil company.
CPC's first contract with Indonesian state oil company PT Pertamina for 1.54 million tonnes of LNG a year will expire in 2009 and a second contract for 1.84 million tonnes ends in 2017.
The state-owned Taiwanese energy company's contract with Malaysia LNG Sdn for 2.25 million tonnes a year will end in March 2015. Malaysia LNG is a unit of Petroliam Nasional Bhd.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
MAJOR BENEFICIARY: The company benefits from TSMC’s advanced packaging scarcity, given robust demand for Nvidia AI chips, analysts said ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, yesterday said it is raising its equipment capital expenditure budget by 10 percent this year to expand leading-edge and advanced packing and testing capacity amid strong artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing chip demand. This is on top of the 40 to 50 percent annual increase in its capital spending budget to more than the US$1.7 billion to announced in February. About half of the equipment capital expenditure would be spent on leading-edge and advanced packaging and testing technology, the company said. ASE is considered by analysts