OIL
Shell to build FLNG plant
Royal Dutch Shell PLC said it has decided to construct a massive natural gas plant for use off the Australian coast. Shell did not say how much the “Prelude FLNG” (floating liquid natural gas) facility would cost to build, but claimed that it would be the world’s largest floating manmade object. It would be designed to take in the equivalent of 110,000 barrels a day in gas from undersea fields 200km off the coast and cool it into liquefied natural gas. Shell said the facility, to be built in a South Korean shipyard, will be longer than six football fields and made of 260,000 tonnes of steel. Shell said yesterday that Prelude would operate for 25 years, and be able to withstand the worst hurricanes.
CHINA
High savings a problem
Central bank governor Zhou Xiaochuan (周小川) said yesterday that too many people were saving too much money, which could lead to asset bubbles, adding that Beijing needed to find a way to promote growth and curb inflation. The nation’s savings rate is one of the highest in the world, standing at about 50 percent of GDP last year — much higher than developed economies. Zhou also reiterated that Beijing would take a “gradual” approach to making the yuan fully convertible, as it continues to promote the international status of the currency.
JAPAN
Sales tax hike considered
The government is considering raising sales tax from 5 percent to 10 percent by 2015 to fund rising social security costs, the Yomiuri newspaper said yesterday, although the economics minister said he had held no discussions on such a proposal. Prime Minister Naoto Kan has made social security and tax reform key to his policy agenda and the government wants to include the tax hike proposal in a welfare and tax reform plan it aims to draft by next month, the Yomiuri reported without citing sources. The sales tax rate in Japan, saddled with public debt double the size of its US$5 trillion economy, is among the lowest in major economies. The extra revenue generated from the 5 percentage-point hike, likely to be about ￥12.5 trillion (US$153 billion) a year, would be used to fund welfare costs such as medical and nursing care for the elderly, the Yomiuri said.
Shares of contract chipmaker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) came under pressure yesterday after a report that Apple Inc is looking to shift some orders from the Taiwanese company to Intel Corp. TSMC shares fell NT$55, or 2.4 percent, to close at NT$2,235 on the local main board, Taiwan Stock Exchange data showed. Despite the losses, TSMC is expected to continue to benefit from sound fundamentals, as it maintains a lead over its peers in high-end process development, analysts said. “The selling was a knee-jerk reaction to an Intel-Apple report over the weekend,” Mega International Investment Services Corp (兆豐國際投顧) analyst Alex Huang
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) is expected to remain Apple Inc’s primary chip manufacturing partner despite reports that Apple could shift some orders to Intel Corp, industry experts said yesterday. The comments came after The Wall Street Journal reported on Friday that Apple and Intel had reached a preliminary agreement following more than a year of negotiations for Intel to manufacture some chips for Apple devices. Taiwan Institute of Economic Research (台灣經濟研究院) economist Arisa Liu (劉佩真) said TSMC’s advanced packaging technologies, including integrated fan-out and chip-on-wafer-on-substrate, remain critical to the performance of Apple’s A-series and M-series chips. She said Intel and Samsung
POWER BUILDUP: Powered by Nvidia’s B200 Blackwell chips, the data center would support MediaTek’s computing power demand and business growth, the company said Smartphone chip designer MediaTek Inc (聯發科) yesterday launched a new artificial intelligence (AI) data center with a maximum capacity of 45 megawatts to meet its rising demand for computing power required to develop new advanced chips for AI applications. The company has completed the first-phase computing power buildup at the data center in Miaoli County’s Tongluo Township (銅鑼), providing 15 megawatts of capacity to support its research and development (R&D) capabilities, despite an industrywide shortage of key components, MediaTek said. Supply constraints have plagued a wide range of key components, including memory chips, solid-state drives, power supply units and central
IMAGE SENSORS: The Japanese company would be the controlling shareholder of the venture, with development and production lines to be set up in Kumamoto Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday said it has signed a non-binding memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Sony Semiconductor Solutions Corp to create a joint venture to develop and produce next-generation images sensors. The partnership seeks to explore and address emerging opportunities in physical artificial intelligence (AI) applications, such as automotive and robotics, paving the way for innovations and expanded technological advancements, TSMC said in a statement. Sony would be the majority and controlling shareholder of the joint venture, the statement said, adding that the company would set up development and production lines in its newly constructed fab in Kumamoto Prefecture’s
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