OIL
Shell to build FLNG plant
Royal Dutch Shell PLC said it has decided to construct a massive natural gas plant for use off the Australian coast. Shell did not say how much the “Prelude FLNG” (floating liquid natural gas) facility would cost to build, but claimed that it would be the world’s largest floating manmade object. It would be designed to take in the equivalent of 110,000 barrels a day in gas from undersea fields 200km off the coast and cool it into liquefied natural gas. Shell said the facility, to be built in a South Korean shipyard, will be longer than six football fields and made of 260,000 tonnes of steel. Shell said yesterday that Prelude would operate for 25 years, and be able to withstand the worst hurricanes.
CHINA
High savings a problem
Central bank governor Zhou Xiaochuan (周小川) said yesterday that too many people were saving too much money, which could lead to asset bubbles, adding that Beijing needed to find a way to promote growth and curb inflation. The nation’s savings rate is one of the highest in the world, standing at about 50 percent of GDP last year — much higher than developed economies. Zhou also reiterated that Beijing would take a “gradual” approach to making the yuan fully convertible, as it continues to promote the international status of the currency.
JAPAN
Sales tax hike considered
The government is considering raising sales tax from 5 percent to 10 percent by 2015 to fund rising social security costs, the Yomiuri newspaper said yesterday, although the economics minister said he had held no discussions on such a proposal. Prime Minister Naoto Kan has made social security and tax reform key to his policy agenda and the government wants to include the tax hike proposal in a welfare and tax reform plan it aims to draft by next month, the Yomiuri reported without citing sources. The sales tax rate in Japan, saddled with public debt double the size of its US$5 trillion economy, is among the lowest in major economies. The extra revenue generated from the 5 percentage-point hike, likely to be about ¥12.5 trillion (US$153 billion) a year, would be used to fund welfare costs such as medical and nursing care for the elderly, the Yomiuri said.
WASHINGTON’S INCENTIVES: The CHIPS Act set aside US$39 billion in direct grants to persuade the world’s top semiconductor companies to make chips on US soil The US plans to award more than US$6 billion to Samsung Electronics Co, helping the chipmaker expand beyond a project in Texas it has already announced, people familiar with the matter said. The money from the 2022 CHIPS and Science Act would be one of several major awards that the US Department of Commerce is expected to announce in the coming weeks, including a grant of more than US$5 billion to Samsung’s rival, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), people familiar with the plans said. The people spoke on condition of anonymity in advance of the official announcements. The federal funding for
HIGH DEMAND: The firm has strong capabilities of providing key components including liquid cooling technology needed for AI servers, chairman Young Liu said Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday revised its revenue outlook for this year to “significant” growth from a “neutral” view forecast five months ago, due to strong demand for artificial intelligence (AI) servers from cloud service providers. Hon Hai, a major assembler of iPhones that is also known as Foxconn, expects AI server revenues to soar more than 40 percent annually this year, chairman Young Liu (劉揚偉) told investors. The robust growth would uplift revenue contribution from AI servers to 40 percent of the company’s overall server revenue this year, from 30 percent last year, Liu said. In the three-year period
LONG HAUL: Largan Energy Materials’ TNO-based lithium-ion batteries are expected to charge in five minutes and last about 20 years, far surpassing conventional technology Largan Precision Co (大立光) has formed a joint venture with the Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI, 工研院) to produce fast-charging, long-life lithium-ion batteries for electric vehicles, mobile electronics and electric storage units, the camera lens supplier for Apple Inc’s iPhones said yesterday. Largan Energy Materials Co (萬溢能源材料), established in January, is developing high-energy, fast-charging, long-life lithium-ion batteries using titanium niobium oxide (TNO) anodes, it said. TNO-based batteries can be fully charged in five minutes and have a lifespan of 20 years, a major advantage over the two to four hours of charging time needed for conventional graphite-anode-based batteries, Largan said in a
Taiwan is one of the first countries to benefit from the artificial intelligence (AI) boom, but because that is largely down to a single company it also represents a risk, former Google Taiwan managing director Chien Lee-feng (簡立峰) said at an AI forum in Taipei yesterday. Speaking at the forum on how generative AI can generate possibilities for all walks of life, Chien said Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) — currently among the world’s 10 most-valuable companies due to continued optimism about AI — ensures Taiwan is one of the economies to benefit most from AI. “This is because AI is