The Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA) yesterday said it would start initiating alternative plans to ensure the sustainable operation of Taiwan’s petrochemical industry in the face of the possible scrapping of the planned Kuokuang Petrochemical Park (國光石化園區).
The ministry said the petrochemical industry was a critical manufacturing sector in Taiwan’s economic development because it supplies key raw materials for both traditional and emerging industries such as green energy, biotechnology and semiconductors.
Taiwanese industries would lose out in global competitiveness without stable and ample supplies of such materials, the ministry said.
The ministry said it would help ensure stable supplies from current naphtha crackers in Taiwan and tender assistance for the possible overseas establishment of a naphtha cracker.
Taiwan currently bans naphtha-cracking operations in China, but the ministry is considering lifting the ban. The private sector would be allowed to invest in China if the ban were lifted, but state-run entities including CPC Corp, Taiwan (台灣中油), would still be restricted from doing so.
“Such an overseas investment is huge in dollar terms and similar to the ban lifted on Taiwanese panel and chip investments in China. Allowing naphtha-cracking investment in China must come with a slew of restraints and conditions,” Minister of Economic Affairs Shih Yen-shiang (施顏祥) told a press conference.
If Taiwan builds a naphtha cracker overseas, it will need to produce at least about 350,000 tonnes of ethylene per year to be transported back to Taiwan to make sure midstream and downstream makers do not suffer a supply squeeze.
Woody Duh (杜紫軍), director-general of the ministry’s Industrial Development Bureau, added that if naphtha crackers were located abroad, ethylene would not be a material easily transported back to Taiwan in bulk shipments, so Taiwanese downstream firms would have to upgrade their products for higher added value and higher quality.
With possible shortages of key components, including ethylene, expected if the Kuokuang park is scrapped, industrial upgrading is the way to go for mid and downstream firms, Duh added.
The ministry will hold a meeting in June to which it will invite petrochemical firms nationwide to find a consensus on the future of the industry.
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