State-run oil refiner CPC Corp, Taiwan (CPC, 中油), is in talks with an Indonesian company to transfer one of its naphtha cracker complexes from Kaohsiung to Indonesia, company chairman Lin Sheng-chung (林聖忠) said yesterday.
The 25-year-old naphtha cracker in Kaohsiung is scheduled to close before the end of this year.
Lin said many foreign companies from developing nations have approached CPC hoping to purchase the facility.
“The talks with the Indonesian company are more promising compared with other companies, and we plan to settle the details before the end of this year,” Lin told reporters on the sidelines of a conference on the petrochemical industry’s development.
The Indonesian company plans to purchase not only the naphtha cracker, but also the technology as well as operation and maintenance know-how, Lin said, adding that the unnamed company had proposed that CPC co-invest in Indonesia.
Negotiations are ongoing, as the two parties discuss details such as whether CPC could purchase products from the cracker in the future or whether they would be sold only in Indonesia, Lin said.
“I will personally visit Indonesia soon to discuss the details of the transaction,” he said.
CPC will “definitely” find a buyer for the naphtha cracker before the end of this year, he said.
Still, CPC is a state-run company and any transaction it makes would require approval from the Ministry of Economic Affairs, the Executive Yuan and the Legislative Yuan.
After the Kaohsiung naphtha cracker is moved to a new location, CPC plans to carry out a 20-year land redevelopment project by spending about NT$11.2 billion (US$358.15 million) in a bid to rehabilitate 174 hectares of contaminated soil and groundwater at the site.
After a series of protests against the naphtha cracker in 1987 to 1990, then-premier Hau Pei-tsun (郝柏村) in 1990 promised Kaohsiung residents that the government would move the naphtha cracker to a new location by this year.
The Petrochemical Industry Association of Taiwan (台灣區石油化學工業同業工會) and petrochemical companies from the Renda Industrial Park (仁大工業區) in Kaohsiung had proposed jointly purchasing or renting the naphtha cracker from CPC.
However, a series of deadly gas explosions in downtown Kaohsiung on July 31 and Aug. 1 last year has made it more difficult to keep the cracker there, officials said.
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