The government has sought measures to protect endangered dolphins before CPC Corp, Taiwan (CPC,
Kuokuang Petrochemical Technology Co (國光石化科技), a venture led by state-run oil refiner CPC, and Formosa Plastics Group should study Indo-Pacific humpback dolphins in their environmental assessments for the proposed projects, Edward Huang (黃光輝), director-general of the Environmental Protection Administration's planning department, said yesterday.
The projects have already been delayed by concerns that they may increase emissions of greenhouse gases. Formosa Plastics Group said in 2005 it plans to spend NT$135 billion (US$4.2 billion) to build a steel mill in Yunlin County, aiming to start output this year. CPC originally planned to begin work in 2004 on a chemical project in the same county.
"If the dolphins are found near the sites, the companies will have to come up with measures to ensure these animals won't be disturbed," Huang said. "Indo-Pacific humpback dolphins are endangered and it's an international practise to project them."
The dolphins were discovered near the west coast in 2002, and the population there is estimated at fewer than 100, the Eastern Taiwan Strait Sousa Technical Advisory Working Group, a newly founded organization aimed at protecting the mammals, said in a statement on Tuesday.
"We don't think Kuokuang will affect the habitat of the dolphins," Kuokuang Petrochemical president Roy Chiu (邱吉雄) said yesterday. "We would like to know what we can do, and we know very little."
A one-year study commissioned by Kuokuang did not spot any of the dolphins near the proposed site, he said. The cost for the chemical project will probably exceed NT$500 billion, higher than the NT$401 billion previously estimated, Chiu said.
The plan will include a 300,000-barrels-a-day crude oil refinery and an ethylene plant with annual capacity of 1.2 million tonnes. CPC and partners founded Kuokuang in 2006 to carry out the project.
Formosa Plastics Group's proposed steel mill will have capacity of 7.5 million metric tonnes a year, Lee Chih-tsuen (
Formosa Plastics, based in Taipei, is the nation's biggest diversified industrial company.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s biggest contract chipmaker, has decided to slow down its 3-nanometer chip production as Intel Corp, one of its major customers, plans to push back the launch of its new Meteor Lake tGPU chipsets to the end of next year, market researcher TrendForce Corp (集邦科技) said yesterday. That means Intel has canceled almost all of the 3-nanometer capacity booked for next year, with only a small amount of wafer input remaining for engineering verification, the Taipei-based researcher said in a report. Based on Intel’s original schedule, TSMC was to start producing the new chipsets in
DATA SHOW DOWNTURN: Manufacturing in Taiwan contracted as production and demand slumped, while growth in chip exports last month eased in South Korea World chip sales growth has decelerated for six straight months in another sign that the global economy is straining under the weight of rising interest rates and mounting geopolitical risks. Semiconductor sales rose 13.3 percent in June from a year earlier, down from 18 percent in May, data from the global peak industry body showed. The slowdown is the longest since the US-China trade dispute in 2018. The three-month moving average in chip sales has correlated with the global economy’s performance in the past few decades. The latest weakness comes as concern about a worldwide recession has prompted chipmakers such as Samsung
Italy is close to clinching a deal initially worth US$5 billion with Intel Corp to build an advanced semiconductor packaging and assembly plant in the country, two sources briefed on discussions said yesterday. Intel’s investment in Italy is part of a wider plan announced by the US chipmaker earlier this year to invest US$88 billion in building capacity across Europe, which is striving to cut its reliance on Asian chip imports and ease a supply crunch that has curbed output in the region’s strategic auto sector. Asking not to be named due to the sensitivity of the matter, the sources said the
Malaysia is scrambling to protect its assets as the descendants of the last sultan of the remote Philippine region of Sulu look to enforce a US$15 billion arbitration award in a dispute over a colonial-era land deal. In 1878, two European colonists signed a deal with the sultan for the use of his territory in present-day Malaysia — an agreement that independent Malaysia honored until 2013, paying the monarch’s descendants about US$1,000 per year. Now, 144 years later after the original deal, Malaysia is on the hook for the second-largest arbitration award on record for stopping the payments after a bloody incursion
RSS