OPEC and 13 Asian countries urged greater oversight of oil and other commodity markets to prevent a surge in prices after the global economy recovers from the worst recession since World War II.
Participants in a ministerial energy roundtable in Tokyo sought limits on positions in over-the-counter trades and said “excessive” oil-price movements are “undesirable,” a statement released after yesterday’s meeting said. They also called for “continuous” investments to boost energy supplies.
OEPC unveiled a plan in January seeking regulations to cap speculative trading by investors who buy oil without planning to use it. Oil futures in New York have gained 16 percent this year and are still 65 percent below the record US$147.27 a barrel reached last July.
Qatari Oil Minister Abdullah bin Hamad al-Attiyah and Japanese Trade Minister Toshihiro Nikai co-chaired the one-day roundtable and delegates included Saudi Arabian Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi and International Energy Agency head Nobuo Tanaka.
“We are not yet certain how we will create and control” limits on trading positions, al-Attiyah said at a press conference in Tokyo.
OPEC and Asian governments would need to watch what measures are adopted by the G20, he said.
“We will take actions to avoid any excessive volatility in commodity futures and Japan will look into what measures are appropriate,” Nikai said at the briefing.
He said oil producing and consuming countries must “join forces” to tackle “supply issues” that may emerge after the world economy recovers.
Paris-based IEA said on Saturday falling investments in production may result in a global oil shortage by 2013. Yesterday, ministers at the roundtable said oil-producing and consuming countries must stem a decline in exploration and output.
“The drying up of liquidity to fund projects underpinning economic growth in emerging and developing economies has been a significant consequence of the recession,” Saudi Arabia’s al- Naimi said in the text of a speech at the meeting.
Falling investment “is of great concern, notably for energy-sector projects adversely affected by oil price volatility and lower demand for oil, when long-range commitments of adequate and timely investment flows are needed to ensure future supply,” he said.
The Asian Energy Ministerial Roundtable meeting is held every two years. The group last met in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, in May 2007.
SEMICONDUCTOR SERVICES: A company executive said that Taiwanese firms must think about how to participate in global supply chains and lift their competitiveness Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday said it expects to launch its first multifunctional service center in Pingtung County in the middle of 2027, in a bid to foster a resilient high-tech facility construction ecosystem. TSMC broached the idea of creating a center two or three years ago when it started building new manufacturing capacity in the US and Japan, the company said. The center, dubbed an “ecosystem park,” would assist local manufacturing facility construction partners to upgrade their capabilities and secure more deals from other global chipmakers such as Intel Corp, Micron Technology Inc and Infineon Technologies AG, TSMC said. It
EXPORT GROWTH: The AI boom has shortened chip cycles to just one year, putting pressure on chipmakers to accelerate development and expand packaging capacity Developing a localized supply chain for advanced packaging equipment is critical for keeping pace with customers’ increasingly shrinking time-to-market cycles for new artificial intelligence (AI) chips, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) said yesterday. Spurred on by the AI revolution, customers are accelerating product upgrades to nearly every year, compared with the two to three-year development cadence in the past, TSMC vice president of advanced packaging technology and service Jun He (何軍) said at a 3D IC Global Summit organized by SEMI in Taipei. These shortened cycles put heavy pressure on chipmakers, as the entire process — from chip design to mass
People walk past advertising for a Syensqo chip at the Semicon Taiwan exhibition in Taipei yesterday.
NO BREAKTHROUGH? More substantial ‘deliverables,’ such as tariff reductions, would likely be saved for a meeting between Trump and Xi later this year, a trade expert said China launched two probes targeting the US semiconductor sector on Saturday ahead of talks between the two nations in Spain this week on trade, national security and the ownership of social media platform TikTok. China’s Ministry of Commerce announced an anti-dumping investigation into certain analog integrated circuits (ICs) imported from the US. The investigation is to target some commodity interface ICs and gate driver ICs, which are commonly made by US companies such as Texas Instruments Inc and ON Semiconductor Corp. The ministry also announced an anti-discrimination probe into US measures against China’s chip sector. US measures such as export curbs and tariffs
RSS