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
WEAKER ACTIVITY: The sharpest deterioration was seen in the electronics and optical components sector, with the production index falling 13.2 points to 44.5 Taiwan’s manufacturing sector last month contracted for a second consecutive month, with the purchasing managers’ index (PMI) slipping to 48, reflecting ongoing caution over trade uncertainties, the Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER, 中華經濟研究院) said yesterday. The decline reflects growing caution among companies amid uncertainty surrounding US tariffs, semiconductor duties and automotive import levies, and it is also likely linked to fading front-loading activity, CIER president Lien Hsien-ming (連賢明) said. “Some clients have started shifting orders to Southeast Asian countries where tariff regimes are already clear,” Lien told a news conference. Firms across the supply chain are also lowering stock levels to mitigate
Six Taiwanese companies, including contract chipmaker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), made the 2025 Fortune Global 500 list of the world’s largest firms by revenue. In a report published by New York-based Fortune magazine on Tuesday, Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), also known as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), ranked highest among Taiwanese firms, placing 28th with revenue of US$213.69 billion. Up 60 spots from last year, TSMC rose to No. 126 with US$90.16 billion in revenue, followed by Quanta Computer Inc (廣達) at 348th, Pegatron Corp (和碩) at 461st, CPC Corp, Taiwan (台灣中油) at 494th and Wistron Corp (緯創) at
NEGOTIATIONS: Semiconductors play an outsized role in Taiwan’s industrial and economic development and are a major driver of the Taiwan-US trade imbalance With US President Donald Trump threatening to impose tariffs on semiconductors, Taiwan is expected to face a significant challenge, as information and communications technology (ICT) products account for more than 70 percent of its exports to the US, Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER, 中華經濟研究院) president Lien Hsien-ming (連賢明) said on Friday. Compared with other countries, semiconductors play a disproportionately large role in Taiwan’s industrial and economic development, Lien said. As the sixth-largest contributor to the US trade deficit, Taiwan recorded a US$73.9 billion trade surplus with the US last year — up from US$47.8 billion in 2023 — driven by strong
ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip assembly and testing service provider, yesterday said it would boost equipment capital expenditure by up to 16 percent for this year to cope with strong customer demand for artificial intelligence (AI) applications. Aside from AI, a growing demand for semiconductors used in the automotive and industrial sectors is to drive ASE’s capacity next year, the Kaohsiung-based company said. “We do see the disparity between AI and other general sectors, and that pretty much aligns the scenario in the first half of this year,” ASE chief operating officer Tien Wu (吳田玉) told an