Energean Oil & Gas Group signed contracts to supply private Israeli power plants with natural gas, the first deals to compete with the partners which dominate the nation’s energy industry.
Greece’s Energean is to supply as much as 23 billion cubic meters of natural gas from the Karish and Tanin fields off Israeli shores to Dalia Power Energies Ltd and Or Power Energies Ltd, an e-mailed statement said yesterday.
The cost is to be linked to the Israeli electricity market and underpinned by a floor price.
Energean has said it would sell to the Israeli market for less than what Israel Electric Corp — the state-run utility and biggest supplier of power — pays to the partners in Israel’s second-largest natural gas reservoir, Tamar.
Israel Electric paid on average US$5.22 per 28.3m3 of gas last year, according to Noble Energy Inc’s annual report.
Noble owns a major stake in and operates the Tamar field.
“The agreement is a substantial step toward bringing competition and cheaper energy to the market,” Energean chief executive officer Mathios Rigas said in the statement.
Energean is negotiating further contracts in the Israeli market and plans to submit a development plan for the Karish and Tanin field “in the next few weeks,” he added.
Establishing competition was the Israeli government’s main goal when it revised its regulatory policies governing the natural gas industry in 2015.
Noble and Israel’s Delek Group Ltd were forced to sell the smaller Karish and Tanin fields and reduce their holdings in Tamar in order to develop Leviathan, Israel’s largest gas reserve.
The Leviathan partners have already signed four contracts with local customers and might sell more.
Energean last year bought Karish and Tanin from Delek and Noble for about US$150 million and future royalties.
The Greek explorer said it would invest more than US$1 billion in development over the next few years, with the aim of pumping gas to clients by 2020.
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
New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last
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