A venture led by state-run CPC Corp, Taiwan (CPC, 台灣中油) will switch to cleaner-burning natural gas from fuel oil to run a planned US$19 billion refining and chemicals project in a final bid to win government approval after a four-year wait.
Stakeholders in Kuokuang Petrochemical Technology Co (國光石化), including the Far Eastern Group (遠東集團) and Fubon Financial Holding Co (富邦金控), have agreed to shut the company should the plant fail to get environmental approval by Nov. 17, Chen Bao-lang (陳寶郎), chairman of the 43 percent CPC-owned venture, said in Taipei.
Switching to imported gas from fuel oil produced at the refinery may increase costs by NT$7.5 billion (US$236 million) a year, he said.
“Kuokuang is paying a higher cost to protect the environment,” Chen, 67, a former CPC president, said in an interview at his Taipei office. “The company doesn’t want to be a heavy burden on society.”
A government-appointed panel comprising academics and bureaucrats has raised concerns ranging from carbon dioxide emissions to protection of endangered dolphins and conservation of wetlands. Kuokuang has pledged to use gas for 60 percent of its needs to help halve emissions, and will buy the fuel from CPC, Chen said.
CPC, Taiwan’s largest refiner, is counting on the project’s 300,000 barrel-a-day refinery and an ethylene plant to compete with rival Formosa Petrochemical Corp (台塑石化). The Kuokuang venture will help CPC make up for lost capacity when one of its refineries in southern Taiwan is decommissioned.
“Without the Kuokuang project, CPC and its customers will be half dead,” Shieh Jun-hsiung (謝俊雄), executive manager at Petrochemical Industry Association of Taiwan, said by telephone. “Formosa Plastics [Group] would be the only dominant player in Taiwan’s petrochemical industry.”
CPC has three refineries — Kaohsiung, Talin and Taoyuan — with a total daily capacity of 720,000 barrels of crude. It has three naphtha crackers with a combined annual capacity of 1.1 million tonnes of ethylene, which is used to make make plastics and chemical fibers.
The Kuokuang project will make up for capacity from the Kaohsiung facility, including a 220,000 barrel-a-day refinery and a 500,000 tonne-a-year ethylene plant, which CPC has pledged to shut by 2015 amid complaints from residents about pollution.
The venture was set up in January 2006 to build a refinery, a 1.2 million-tonnes-a-year ethylene plant and factories to produce 20 chemical products, Chen said.
Kuokuang relocated the project in 2008 to Changhua County from Yunlin County to address concerns about water usage.
The construction cost of the project may climb to NT$600 billion (US$18.8 billion) from the prior estimate of NT$400.5 billion because of increased raw-material prices, he said.
Meanwhile, Formosa Petrochemical said it had restarted a crude processing plant on Tuesday, bringing the total number of crude units back in operation to two.
Formosa Petrochemical expects to reach two-thirds of its crude processing capacity by today, spokesman Lin Keh-yen (林克彥) said by telephone.
Separately, the company is cutting its ethylene supply to customers by 25 percent this month after shutting a plant last month, Lin said.
The company had shut its 540,000 barrel-a-day Mailiao (麥寮) refinery for safety reasons after an oil leak triggered a blaze at its No. 2 residual desulfurization unit on July 25.
Formosa Petrochemical halted its No. 1 ethylene plant, which has an annual capacity of 700,000 tonnes, on July 7 after a fire.
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”