State-owned CPC Corp, Taiwan (CPC, 台灣中油) announced yesterday that it had signed a contract with Ras Laffan Liquefied Natural Gas Co II (RasGas II) in Qatar, to acquire a 5 percent stake in one of the company’s production lines, a move that marks CPC’s first step into the upstream natural gas sector.
In September 2005, CPC signed a sales and purchase agreement (SPA) with RasGas II for the supply of 3 million tonnes of liquefied natural gas (LNG) annually over a 25 year period, from this year until 2032, in a bid to ensure sufficient supply to meet domestic demand, CPC said in its statement.
RasGas II owns three production lines. Each line has an annual production capacity of 4.7 million tonnes.
JOINT VENTURE
RasGas II, established in 2001, is a joint venture between state-owned Qatar Petroleum and the world’s largest publicly traded oil and gas company Exxon Mobil Corp. The company’s natural gas comes from Qatar’s offshore North Field, which is the second-largest natural gas field in the world.
Qatar began to produce and sell LNG in 1999, and surpassed Indonesia to become the world’s largest LNG supplier in 2006. Qatar exported 29 million tonnes of LNG last year and expects that figure to grow to 77 million tonnes by 2012, accounting for 30 percent of the world’s LNG export volumes.
CPC is the only LNG supplier in Taiwan.
FUEL PRICES
In related news, domestic gasoline and diesel prices will decrease by NT$1.6 and NT$1.8 per liter respectively today to reflect declining international crude oil prices, CPC and Taiwan’s only publicly traded oil refiner Formosa Petrochemical Corp (台塑石化) both announced yesterday.
After the price adjustment, CPC’s price for a liter of 98-octane unleaded gasoline will be NT$31.2, 95-octane unleaded gasoline is NT$29.7, 92-octane unleaded gasoline is NT$29 and diesel is NT$26.4.
The latest cuts marked the third week in a row local fuel prices have been lowered, sending them for the first time to below the prices when President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) took power on May 20.
The CPC adopted a floating pricing mechanism on Aug. 7 that reviews prices on a weekly basis based on fluctuations in the prices of Dubai and Brent crude oil as quoted on Platts, a leading global provider of energy information.
ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY CNA
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