The legislature’s Foreign and National Defense Committee is scheduled to review on Thursday the operations and rates of the natural gas companies in which the Veteran Affairs Council has invested, as rates of domestic natural gas have continued to rise, despite falling global natural gas prices.
Citing the Natural Gas Enterprise Law (天然氣事業法) promulgated by the Ministry of Economic Affairs last year, which stipulates that any shareholder in such a business can only receive a maximum 5 percent rate of return on their investment, Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) called into question 16 highly lucrative natural gas companies in which the council holds shares.
“These 16 companies have pretty much monopolized Taiwan’s natural gas market, with a market share of 57 percent and an investment return rate of 20.7 percent on the north side of the Jhuoshuei River (濁水溪) — the symbolic dividing line between north and south Taiwan,” Lin said.
“While on the south side of the Jhuoshuei River, those firms hold a substantial 97 percent of the market and have an investment return rate of about 12 percent. Both figures [return rates] surpass the stipulated level,” Lin said.
These 16 companies include Shin Lung Natural Gas Co, Shin Shin Natural Gas Co, Shin Chung Natural Gas Co, Shintao Natural Gas Co and Nan Jehn Natural Gas Co, among others.
Meanwhile, Taiwan Solidarity Union (TSU) Legislator Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) referred to some of the chairmen of these companies as “super fat cats.”
“If one looks into the background of the chairmen of these 16 companies, the majority of them are retired high-ranking military officers who enjoy a monthly wage of between NT$120,000 [US$4,000] and NT$180,000,” Lin Chia-lung said.
Calling the country’s natural gas pricing mechanism “repugnant to common sense,” Lin Chia-lung said Taiwan’s natural gas prices have increased by 44 percent in the past five years, while global rates have dropped 52 percent.
“These companies have repeatedly attributed price increases in domestic natural gas to global fluctuations, while international prices are actually going down, instead of the other way around,” Lin Chia-lung said.
Lin Chia-lung said the government should conduct a full-fledged review into the country’s natural gas industry to uncover any malpractices or operational problems in the next two months, during which the rates of household liquefied petroleum gas and natural gas would be temporarily frozen as per a decision made by the legislature’s Economics Committee on Monday last week.
“The council should decrease the prices of these 16 companies, cut their rate of return [to 5 percent] as well as allow them to go public to advance their operational transparency,” she said.
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods