The Ministry of Economic Affairs yesterday said it is ready to “sit down and exchange opinions” with environmentalists pushing a referendum to block the construction of a planned third liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminal at the Guantang Industrial Park (觀塘工業區) in Taoyuan.
The so-called “pink storm” referendum has garnered more than 430,000 signatures to stop the terminal and protect “algal reefs that are more than 7,500 years old” off Guanyin District’s (觀音) Datan Borough (大潭).
“We are willing to communicate with environmentalists in any way possible,” Minister of Economic Affairs Wang Mei-hua (王美花) said.
Photo: Cheng Shu-ting, Taipei Times
“If the referendum process goes forward, the Central Election Commission would hold hearings, which we would participate in, but we welcome exchanges of ideas whenever possible,” Wang said.
“Let us sit down and talk,” she said.
Environmental groups have accused the government of not considering “possible win-win alternatives” to the site for the planned project.
They have dismissed Wang’s remarks that blocking the project would lead to more burning of coal, saying that it amounted to “threatening the people.”
“In no way are we ‘threatening the people,’” Wang said. “Long-term planning is required to ensure electricity supply.”
President Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) energy transition plan calls for the proportion of natural gas used in electricity generation to be raised to 50 percent, said CPC Corp, Taiwan (CPC, 台灣中油), which is responsible for the construction of the LNG terminal.
“Currently we have two receiving terminals that are already running flat out,” CPC spokesman Chang Ray-chung (張瑞宗) said. “Without a third receiving terminal, there would be no way to supply the seventh, eighth and ninth generators at the Datan LNG plant.”
Generators 8 and 9 would between them provide 6 percent of Taiwan’s total power output, Chang said.
“If that 6 percent deficit is not filled, we would have to burn coal, which releases twice as much greenhouse gas and is also more polluting,” he said.
The first storage tank at the planned terminal is scheduled to be finished in October next year, although the whole complex, which is to have two storage tanks, a wharf and a regasification system, is not slated to be completed until 2025, he said.
When asked if alternatives to the site could be found, Chang said that a move would require a lengthy process of planning and assessment.
“We went through years of environmental impact assessments for the current site,” he said. “All of that would have to be repeated.”
“A site further from the power plant would require 30km to 50km of pipeline,” Chang said.
“Moreover, no matter what site is chosen, there is no guarantee that there would not be objections,” he said.
An assessment by CPC did not find a vibrant algal reef environment that environmentalists claim exists at the site, Chang said.
“The planned terminal has been moved 740m offshore, where the water is more than 10m deep,” he said. “The seafloor is sand and is not a biodiverse site.”
The US dollar was trading at NT$29.7 at 10am today on the Taipei Foreign Exchange, as the New Taiwan dollar gained NT$1.364 from the previous close last week. The NT dollar continued to rise today, after surging 3.07 percent on Friday. After opening at NT$30.91, the NT dollar gained more than NT$1 in just 15 minutes, briefly passing the NT$30 mark. Before the US Department of the Treasury's semi-annual currency report came out, expectations that the NT dollar would keep rising were already building. The NT dollar on Friday closed at NT$31.064, up by NT$0.953 — a 3.07 percent single-day gain. Today,
‘SHORT TERM’: The local currency would likely remain strong in the near term, driven by anticipated US trade pressure, capital inflows and expectations of a US Fed rate cut The US dollar is expected to fall below NT$30 in the near term, as traders anticipate increased pressure from Washington for Taiwan to allow the New Taiwan dollar to appreciate, Cathay United Bank (國泰世華銀行) chief economist Lin Chi-chao (林啟超) said. Following a sharp drop in the greenback against the NT dollar on Friday, Lin told the Central News Agency that the local currency is likely to remain strong in the short term, driven in part by market psychology surrounding anticipated US policy pressure. On Friday, the US dollar fell NT$0.953, or 3.07 percent, closing at NT$31.064 — its lowest level since Jan.
The New Taiwan dollar and Taiwanese stocks surged on signs that trade tensions between the world’s top two economies might start easing and as US tech earnings boosted the outlook of the nation’s semiconductor exports. The NT dollar strengthened as much as 3.8 percent versus the US dollar to 30.815, the biggest intraday gain since January 2011, closing at NT$31.064. The benchmark TAIEX jumped 2.73 percent to outperform the region’s equity gauges. Outlook for global trade improved after China said it is assessing possible trade talks with the US, providing a boost for the nation’s currency and shares. As the NT dollar
The Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) yesterday met with some of the nation’s largest insurance companies as a skyrocketing New Taiwan dollar piles pressure on their hundreds of billions of dollars in US bond investments. The commission has asked some life insurance firms, among the biggest Asian holders of US debt, to discuss how the rapidly strengthening NT dollar has impacted their operations, people familiar with the matter said. The meeting took place as the NT dollar jumped as much as 5 percent yesterday, its biggest intraday gain in more than three decades. The local currency surged as exporters rushed to
RSS