OIL
CPC greenlights boss pick
State-run oil refiner CPC Corp, Taiwan’s (CPC, 中油) board of directors yesterday approved a proposal to tap China American Petrochemical Co Ltd (CAPCO, 中美和石油) president Paul Chen (陳綠蔚) to replace CPC president Arthur Kung (孔祥雲). Chen worked in CPC management for 30 years before joining CAPCO in January last year. He said he plans to maintain current policies to improve CPC’s business. Chen said he planned to increase CPC’s oil and natural gas exploration projects as the company needs to grow its oil and natural gas outputs by up to 10 percent a year to reduce reliance on imports and trim losses. As of Aug. 31, CPC’s accumulated losses were NT$71.3 billion (US$2.41 billion), company data showed.
Photo: Fang Pin-chao, Taipei Times
ENERGY
Formosa refinery still limited
Formosa Petrochemical Corp (台塑石化) yesterday said it plans to maintain the operating rate of its Mailiao refinery in Yunlin County at about three-quarters of capacity after it restarted a unit that reduces sulfur from fuels. The nation’s only publicly traded oil refiner restarted a residual desulfurizer at the 540,000 barrel-a-day plant on Sunday and a crude distillation unit on Sept. 10, company spokesman Lin Keh-yen (林克彥) said. The refinery’s crude processing has risen to 400,000 barrels a day this week, from 300,000 barrels last week, Lin said by telephone. Formosa is in “no hurry” to boost throughput as it has sufficient stockpiles of middle distillates, he added.
The Eurovision Song Contest has seen a surge in punter interest at the bookmakers, becoming a major betting event, experts said ahead of last night’s giant glamfest in Basel. “Eurovision has quietly become one of the biggest betting events of the year,” said Tomi Huttunen, senior manager of the Online Computer Finland (OCS) betting and casino platform. Betting sites have long been used to gauge which way voters might be leaning ahead of the world’s biggest televised live music event. However, bookmakers highlight a huge increase in engagement in recent years — and this year in particular. “We’ve already passed 2023’s total activity and
Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) today announced that his company has selected "Beitou Shilin" in Taipei for its new Taiwan office, called Nvidia Constellation, putting an end to months of speculation. Industry sources have said that the tech giant has been eyeing the Beitou Shilin Science Park as the site of its new overseas headquarters, and speculated that the new headquarters would be built on two plots of land designated as "T17" and "T18," which span 3.89 hectares in the park. "I think it's time for us to reveal one of the largest products we've ever built," Huang said near the
China yesterday announced anti-dumping duties as high as 74.9 percent on imports of polyoxymethylene (POM) copolymers, a type of engineering plastic, from Taiwan, the US, the EU and Japan. The Chinese Ministry of Commerce’s findings conclude a probe launched in May last year, shortly after the US sharply increased tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles, computer chips and other imports. POM copolymers can partially replace metals such as copper and zinc, and have various applications, including in auto parts, electronics and medical equipment, the Chinese ministry has said. In January, it said initial investigations had determined that dumping was taking place, and implemented preliminary
CUSTOMERS’ BURDEN: TSMC already has operations in the US and is a foundry, so any tariff increase would mostly affect US customers, not the company, the minister said Taiwanese manufacturers are “not afraid” of US tariffs, but are concerned about being affected more heavily than regional economic competitors Japan and South Korea, Minister of Economic Affairs J.W. Kuo (郭智輝) said. “Taiwan has many advantages that other countries do not have, the most notable of which is its semiconductor ecosystem,” Kuo said. The US “must rely on Taiwan” to boost its microchip manufacturing capacities, Kuo said in an interview ahead of his one-year anniversary in office tomorrow. Taiwan has submitted a position paper under Section 232 of the US Trade Expansion Act to explain the “complementary relationship” between Taiwan and the US
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