Australia’s competition watchdog yesterday raised concerns about energy giant Royal Dutch Shell PLC’s purchase of Britain’s BG Group, saying it could raise domestic prices, while delaying a final decision to November.
The planned £47 billion (US$72.8 billion) deal announced in April has to be approved by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission as well as Chinese regulators, and would make Shell the world’s second-largest oil and gas company.
However, commission chairman Rod Sims said the takeover could see Anglo-Dutch titan Shell direct the gas reserves of Australian firm Arrow Energy Ltd — which it has a 50 percent interest in — to BG’s liquefied natural gas (LNG) facilities in Queensland state.
This would then remove some or all the gas from the local market to meet BG’s contracts to supply LNG export markets, Sims said.
“Currently, Arrow has the largest quantity of uncommitted gas reserves in eastern Australia and there are a limited number of other potential suppliers to the domestic market,” Sims said in a statement. “If the proposed acquisition resulted in less supply of gas to the domestic market, therefore, this could substantially lessen competition to supply domestic gas users and lead to higher domestic prices and more restrictive contractual terms.”
The commission was originally due to release the final decision early this month, but said it was now inviting further submissions from the industry and deferred an announcement until Nov. 12.
Energy producer BG Group is developing Queensland Curtis LNG through its Australian arm, QGC, with the company claiming a world first at turning gas from coal seams into LNG.
The Shell-BG Group acquisition is the energy sector’s biggest in a decade and consolidates the two firms’ positions as the industry battles with sliding oil prices.
The deal was approved earlier this month by the European Commission, which said it did not raise competition concerns.
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
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],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day