PETROLEUM
CNOOC signs Uganda deal
China’s state-owned CNOOC (中國海洋石油) has secured a US$2 billion deal to develop a petroleum field in Uganda and help propel the east African nation into the club of oil-producing countries, Ugandan Deputy Minister of Energy Peter Lokeris said on Friday. Uganda has oil reserves estimated at 3.5 billion barrels, but the path to production has been a bumpy one since deposits were discovered in 2006 near its border with the Democratic Republic of Congo. Lokeris said he expected the initial output of the new Chinese-run field to be modest. “We expect to produce about 40,000 barrels of oil per day once the Kingfisher well is fully developed and operational,” he said.
PETROLEUM
Statoil makes discovery
Norwegian energy company Statoil ASA says it has made another “significant” discovery of crude oil off the Canadian coast in the Flemish Pass. The company said on Friday it was the second find in two days in the Bay du Nord prospect, 500km northeast off Newfoundland, but did not estimate its size. On Thursday, Statoil announced that its Canadian unit and partner Husky Energy had made its first Bay du Nord exploration estimated at between 300 million and 600 million barrels of recoverable oil. The company said the new finds confirm that the Flemish Pass has the potential of becoming a core producing area for Statoil after 2020.
CYPRUS
Orphanides warrant issued
An arrest warrant was issued on Friday after the former head of the country’s central bank failed to appear before a district court for a hearing, the Cyprus News Agency reported. Former central bank governor Athanasios Orphanides, who is currently in the US, had been due to attend the hearing in Limassol in connection with a private lawsuit filed by a resident who had purchased Laiki Bank bonds worth 400,000 euros (US$540,000). Orphanides, served as central bank governor from May 2007 to May last year.
TECHNOLOGY
Microsoft reports on requests
Microsoft said on Friday it received more than 37,000 government requests for information in the first half of the year — excluding any national security requests. In only its second report on the matter, the US tech giant’s figures appeared to be on pace with last year, when it got 75,378 requests. The company said it provided “non-content data” — usually names or basic subscriber information — in 77 percent of requests, and nothing in about 21 percent. In 2.19 percent of the cases, the company turned over “customer content.”
IRAN
Country off deadbeat list
The World Bank removed the country from its list of deadbeat borrowers on Friday, saying the Islamic Republic had paid outstanding loan amounts. The bank said that its key lending unit “has moved all loans to the Islamic Republic of Iran from non-performing status to performing status following the payment of all overdue amounts on these loans.” The Bank had placed the country’s account on non-performing status on July 16, when the country fell six months in arrears in paying US$79.1 million on nearly US$700 million in outstanding loan principal.
Nvidia Corp earned its US$2.2 trillion market cap by producing artificial intelligence (AI) chips that have become the lifeblood powering the new era of generative AI developers from start-ups to Microsoft Corp, OpenAI and Google parent Alphabet Inc. Almost as important to its hardware is the company’s nearly 20 years’ worth of computer code, which helps make competition with the company nearly impossible. More than 4 million global developers rely on Nvidia’s CUDA software platform to build AI and other apps. Now a coalition of tech companies that includes Qualcomm Inc, Google and Intel Corp plans to loosen Nvidia’s chokehold by going
DECOUPLING? In a sign of deeper US-China technology decoupling, Apple has held initial talks about using Baidu’s generative AI technology in its iPhones, the Wall Street Journal said China has introduced guidelines to phase out US microprocessors from Intel Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) from government PCs and servers, the Financial Times reported yesterday. The procurement guidance also seeks to sideline Microsoft Corp’s Windows operating system and foreign-made database software in favor of domestic options, the report said. Chinese officials have begun following the guidelines, which were unveiled in December last year, the report said. They order government agencies above the township level to include criteria requiring “safe and reliable” processors and operating systems when making purchases, the newspaper said. The US has been aiming to boost domestic semiconductor
ENERGY IMPACT: The electricity rate hike is expected to add about NT$4 billion to TSMC’s electricity bill a year and cut its annual earnings per share by about NT$0.154 Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has left its long-term gross margin target unchanged despite the government deciding on Friday to raise electricity rates. One of the heaviest power consuming manufacturers in Taiwan, TSMC said it always respects the government’s energy policy and would continue to operate its fabs by making efforts in energy conservation. The chipmaker said it has left a long-term goal of more than 53 percent in gross margin unchanged. The Ministry of Economic Affairs concluded a power rate evaluation meeting on Friday, announcing electricity tariffs would go up by 11 percent on average to about NT$3.4518 per kilowatt-hour (kWh)
OPENING ADDRESS: The CEO is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing and artificial intelligence at the trade show’s opening on June 3, TAITRA said Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) chairperson and chief executive officer Lisa Su (蘇姿丰) is to deliver the opening keynote speech at Computex Taipei this year, the event’s organizer said in a statement yesterday. Su is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing (HPC) in the artificial intelligence (AI) era to open Computex, one of the world’s largest computer and technology trade events, at 9:30am on June 3, the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) said. Su is to explore how AMD and the company’s strategic technology partners are pushing the limits of AI and HPC, from data centers to