Formosa Petrochemical Corp (台塑石化), the nation’s only publicly traded oil refiner, said it may need one to two weeks to have two-thirds of its Mailiao oil refinery fully operational after a fire damaged a unit three days ago.
Formosa is preparing to restart one of the crude processing units at the plant and may begin feeding oil to it tomorrow, spokesman Lin Keh-yen (林克彥) said.
The Chinese-language Commercial Times reported yesterday the refiner could take a year to restart the residual desulfurization unit damaged by Sunday’s fire.
“I am not that pessimistic,” Lin said by telephone.
The company shut the 540,000-barrel-a-day refinery for safety reasons after on oil leak triggered a fire at the No. 2 residual desulfurization unit, Lin said on Monday.
The blaze was the second accident at the refiner’s Mailiao complex this month. Formosa halted its No. 1 ethylene plant, which has an annual capacity of 700,000 tonnes, on July 7 after a fire.
Yuanta Securities Co (元大證券) analyst Danny Ho (何耀仁) said Formosa may need as little as two months to resume production at the residual processing unit and supporting plants.
The refinery has three crude distillation units, each able to process 180,000 barrels a day. The plants heat crude and separate it into oil products. Residual desulfurization units remove sulfur from residual fuel.
Direct losses” from the fire are estimated at NT$500 million (US$15.6 million), the company said in a statement on Monday.
SEMICONDUCTOR SERVICES: A company executive said that Taiwanese firms must think about how to participate in global supply chains and lift their competitiveness Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday said it expects to launch its first multifunctional service center in Pingtung County in the middle of 2027, in a bid to foster a resilient high-tech facility construction ecosystem. TSMC broached the idea of creating a center two or three years ago when it started building new manufacturing capacity in the US and Japan, the company said. The center, dubbed an “ecosystem park,” would assist local manufacturing facility construction partners to upgrade their capabilities and secure more deals from other global chipmakers such as Intel Corp, Micron Technology Inc and Infineon Technologies AG, TSMC said. It
EXPORT GROWTH: The AI boom has shortened chip cycles to just one year, putting pressure on chipmakers to accelerate development and expand packaging capacity Developing a localized supply chain for advanced packaging equipment is critical for keeping pace with customers’ increasingly shrinking time-to-market cycles for new artificial intelligence (AI) chips, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) said yesterday. Spurred on by the AI revolution, customers are accelerating product upgrades to nearly every year, compared with the two to three-year development cadence in the past, TSMC vice president of advanced packaging technology and service Jun He (何軍) said at a 3D IC Global Summit organized by SEMI in Taipei. These shortened cycles put heavy pressure on chipmakers, as the entire process — from chip design to mass
Germany is to establish its first-ever national pavilion at Semicon Taiwan, which starts tomorrow in Taipei, as the country looks to raise its profile and deepen semiconductor ties with Taiwan as global chip demand accelerates. Martin Mayer, a semiconductor investment expert at Germany Trade & Invest (GTAI), Germany’s international economic promotion agency, said before leaving for Taiwan that the nation is a crucial partner in developing Germany’s semiconductor ecosystem. Germany’s debut at the international semiconductor exhibition in Taipei aims to “show presence” and signal its commitment to semiconductors, while building trust with Taiwanese companies, government and industry associations, he said. “The best outcome
People walk past advertising for a Syensqo chip at the Semicon Taiwan exhibition in Taipei yesterday.
RSS