Formosa Petrochemical Corp (FPCC, 台塑石化), Taiwan’s only publicly traded oil refiner, shut a residual processing unit in Mailiao (麥寮), Yunlin County, on Thursday to check for possible faulty piping.
The stoppage of the No. 1 residual desulfurization unit may last one to two weeks, spokesman Lin Keh-yen (林克彥) said by telephone yesterday.
The company has halted its No. 2 residual desulfurization unit since a fire on July 25. Each of the plants can process 80,500 barrels a day.
“We’ve stopped the unit for safety reasons,” he said.
Inspection of the No. 2 plant indicated the piping design of the units might be flawed, he said.
The company will seek to delay some shipments of diesel and gasoline because of the closure, he added.
Residual desulfurization units remove sulfur from residual fuel. Formosa Petrochemical’s Mailiao refinery has three crude distillation units, each able to process 180,000 barrels a day.
The company is using about a third of its crude refining capacity because of the stoppage of the residual processing units, Lin said.
Meanwhile, the company said it restarted a gasoline-making unit at Mailiao on Thursday that was shut on Aug. 18 because of a steam leak.
The No. 2 residual fluid catalytic cracker is operating at 70 percent of capacity, Lin said.
The refiner has two residual fluid catalytic crackers, each capable of processing 84,000 barrels of fuel a day. The units convert heavier refined products, such as residual fuel, into higher-value products, including gasoline. Formosa Petrochemical has the capacity to process 540,000 barrels of crude oil per day.
Formosa’s other residual fluid catalytic cracker is also running at 70 percent of capacity, Lin said.
POWERING UP: PSUs for AI servers made up about 50% of Delta’s total server PSU revenue during the first three quarters of last year, the company said Power supply and electronic components maker Delta Electronics Inc (台達電) reported record-high revenue of NT$161.61 billion (US$5.11 billion) for last quarter and said it remains positive about this quarter. Last quarter’s figure was up 7.6 percent from the previous quarter and 41.51 percent higher than a year earlier, and largely in line with Yuanta Securities Investment Consulting Co’s (元大投顧) forecast of NT$160 billion. Delta’s annual revenue last year rose 31.76 percent year-on-year to NT$554.89 billion, also a record high for the company. Its strong performance reflected continued demand for high-performance power solutions and advanced liquid-cooling products used in artificial intelligence (AI) data centers,
SIZE MATTERS: TSMC started phasing out 8-inch wafer production last year, while Samsung is more aggressively retiring 8-inch capacity, TrendForce said Chipmakers are expected to raise prices of 8-inch wafers by up to 20 percent this year on concern over supply constraints as major contract chipmakers Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) and Samsung Electronics Co gradually retire less advanced wafer capacity, TrendForce Corp (集邦科技) said yesterday. It is the first significant across-the-board price hike since a global semiconductor correction in 2023, the Taipei-based market researcher said in a report. Global 8-inch wafer capacity slid 0.3 percent year-on-year last year, although 8-inch wafer prices still hovered at relatively stable levels throughout the year, TrendForce said. The downward trend is expected to continue this year,
Vincent Wei led fellow Singaporean farmers around an empty Malaysian plot, laying out plans for a greenhouse and rows of leafy vegetables. What he pitched was not just space for crops, but a lifeline for growers struggling to make ends meet in a city-state with high prices and little vacant land. The future agriculture hub is part of a joint special economic zone launched last year by the two neighbors, expected to cost US$123 million and produce 10,000 tonnes of fresh produce annually. It is attracting Singaporean farmers with promises of cheaper land, labor and energy just over the border.
US actor Matthew McConaughey has filed recordings of his image and voice with US patent authorities to protect them from unauthorized usage by artificial intelligence (AI) platforms, a representative said earlier this week. Several video clips and audio recordings were registered by the commercial arm of the Just Keep Livin’ Foundation, a non-profit created by the Oscar-winning actor and his wife, Camila, according to the US Patent and Trademark Office database. Many artists are increasingly concerned about the uncontrolled use of their image via generative AI since the rollout of ChatGPT and other AI-powered tools. Several US states have adopted
RSS