CPC Corp, Taiwan (CPC, 台灣中油) is to appoint company vice president Lee Shun-chin (李順欽) as its new president, replacing Liu Cheng-hsie (劉晟熙), who has resigned due to health reasons, local media reported on Saturday, citing Ministry of Economic Affairs sources.
CPC, along with three other state-run companies — Taiwan Power Co (台電), Taiwan Sugar Corp (台糖) and Taiwan Water Corp (台水), is under the supervision of the ministry’s State-Owned Enterprise Commission.
The appointment is pending the approval of the Executive Yuan and the ratification of the refiner’s board in a meeting scheduled to be held later this month, media reported.
Lee, 65, has worked at CPC for 38 years and is also chief executive officer of the company’s refinery business division.
He is to take office next month at the earliest and must deal with a controversial liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminal project off the coast of Datan Borough (大潭) in Taoyuan’s Guanyin District (觀音) amid opposition from environmentalists, reports said.
CPC plans to start the construction of the LNG terminal in June and the ministry has proposed to reduce the planned area of the terminal to protect coastal algal reefs, but the project has yet to pass an environmental impact assessment by the Environmental Protection Administration.
Separately, CPC yesterday announced that it will hike fuel prices this week for the fifth week in a row, as crude oil prices moved higher last week amid growing market confidence that OPEC will maintain its efforts to implement an output cut and due to a continued decline in the US crude oil inventories.
CPC said that its average cost of crude oil increased by US$1.34 per barrel to US$67.06.
This meant it had to increase gasoline prices by NT$0.2 per liter and diesel prices by NT$0.3 per liter from today after factoring in the New Taiwan dollar’s appreciation of NT$0.012 against the US dollar, the refiner said.
BUSINESS UPDATE: The iPhone assembler said operations outlook is expected to show quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year growth for the second quarter Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday reported strong growth in sales last month, potentially raising expectations for iPhone sales while artificial intelligence (AI)-related business booms. The company, which assembles the majority of Apple Inc’s smartphones, reported a 19.03 percent rise in monthly sales to NT$510.9 billion (US$15.78 billion), from NT$429.22 billion in the same period last year. On a monthly basis, sales rose 14.16 percent, it said. The company in a statement said that last month’s revenue was a record-breaking April performance. Hon Hai, known also as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), assembles most iPhones, but the company is diversifying its business to
Apple Inc has been developing a homegrown chip to run artificial intelligence (AI) tools in data centers, although it is unclear if the semiconductor would ever be deployed, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday. The effort would build on Apple’s previous efforts to make in-house chips, which run in its iPhones, Macs and other devices, according to the Journal, which cited unidentified people familiar with the matter. The server project is code-named ACDC (Apple Chips in Data Center) within the company, aiming to utilize Apple’s expertise in chip design for the company’s server infrastructure, the newspaper said. While this initiative has been
Clambering hand-over-hand, sweat dripping into his eyes, a durian laborer expertly slices a cumbersome fruit from a tree before tossing it down to land with a soft thump in his colleague’s waiting arms about 15m below. Among Thailand’s most famous and lucrative exports, the pungent “king of fruits” is as distinctive in its smell as its spiky green-brown carapace, and has been farmed in the kingdom for hundreds of years. However, a vicious heat wave engulfing Southeast Asia has resulted in smaller yields and spiraling costs, with growers and sellers increasingly panicked as global warming damages the industry. “This year is a crisis,”
HIGH-TECH: As leading-edge process technologies become more complicated, only a handful of players are able to provide design services, the company’s CEO said Artificial intelligence (AI) chip designer Alchip Technologies Ltd (世芯) yesterday said that revenue would grow significantly again in 2026 after adding a major AI chip customer, reversing moderation amid a product transition next year. The Taipei-based application-specific IC (ASIC) designer reiterated its strong revenue growth forecast for this year and 2026 after its stock plummeted about 23 percent to NT$3,145 from a peak of NT$4,085 on March 6 amid growing competition. Alchip said it has built strong partnerships with cloud service providers (CSP), denying that it had lost orders to smaller competitors such as Faraday Technology Corp (智原). Faraday said it has secured