CPC Corp, Taiwan (台灣中油), the nation’s state-run oil company, and China National Offshore Oil Corp (中海油) have expanded their joint search for oil and gas to overseas.
In one of four accords signed on Friday, China National agreed to sell a 30 percent share in a Kenyan exploration block to CPC, the Taiwanese firm said in a statement on its Web site. Beijing- based China National is parent company of Hong Kong-listed CNOOC Ltd.
“The accords mean we’ll be exploring together overseas,” CPC spokesman Liao Tsang-long (廖滄龍) said by telephone on Friday. “That’s an important step.”
The companies’ previous agreement covered only waters off Taiwan.
After the sale to CPC, China National Offshore will own 40 percent of the Kenya block, in the African nation’s northern Anza basin, the Taiwanese company said.
CPC and China National Offshore also renewed through 2010 an agreement signed in 2002 to drill three exploratory wells off southern Taiwan.
The companies will also study the feasibility of exploring in the Nanridao basin off northern Taiwan, CPC said.
A fourth agreement calls for cooperation on a range of activities, such as overseas exploration, natural gas market development, crude oil refining and oil product trading, CPC said.
CPC chairman Pan Wenent (潘文炎) said in May last year that the company plans to more than double oil and gas reserves in five years to shield the nation against the rising cost of crude oil imports.
CPC has investments in fields in Africa, Southeast Asia, the US, Australia and Latin America.
Taiwan’s foreign exchange reserves hit a record high at the end of last month, surpassing the US$600 billion mark for the first time, the central bank said yesterday. Last month, the country’s foreign exchange reserves rose US$5.51 billion from a month earlier to reach US$602.94 billion due to an increase in returns from the central bank’s portfolio management, the movement of other foreign currencies in the portfolio against the US dollar and the bank’s efforts to smooth the volatility of the New Taiwan dollar. Department of Foreign Exchange Director-General Eugene Tsai (蔡炯民)said a rate cut cycle launched by the US Federal Reserve
The US government on Wednesday sanctioned more than two dozen companies in China, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates, including offshoots of a US chip firm, accusing the businesses of providing illicit support to Iran’s military or proxies. The US Department of Commerce included two subsidiaries of US-based chip distributor Arrow Electronics Inc (艾睿電子) on its so-called entity list published on the federal register for facilitating purchases by Iran’s proxies of US tech. Arrow spokesman John Hourigan said that the subsidiaries have been operating in full compliance with US export control regulations and his company is discussing with the US Bureau of
Businesses across the global semiconductor supply chain are bracing themselves for disruptions from an escalating trade war, after China imposed curbs on rare earth mineral exports and the US responded with additional tariffs and restrictions on software sales to the Asian nation. China’s restrictions, the most targeted move yet to limit supplies of rare earth materials, represent the first major attempt by Beijing to exercise long-arm jurisdiction over foreign companies to target the semiconductor industry, threatening to stall the chips powering the artificial intelligence (AI) boom. They prompted US President Donald Trump on Friday to announce that he would impose an additional
Pegatron Corp (和碩), a key assembler of Apple Inc’s iPhones, on Thursday reported a 12.3 percent year-on-year decline in revenue for last quarter to NT$257.86 billion (US$8.44 billion), but it expects revenue to improve in the second half on traditional holiday demand. The fourth quarter is usually the peak season for its communications products, a company official said on condition of anonymity. As Apple released its new iPhone 17 series early last month, sales in the communications segment rose sequentially last month, the official said. Shipments to Apple have been stable and in line with earlier expectations, they said. Pegatron shipped 2.4 million notebook
RSS