A tanker seen at a refinery in Mailiao Harbor, Yunlin County, belonging to Formosa Petrochemical Corp (台塑石化) was delivering crude oil bought from Russia, the company said on Thursday.
As Western nations have stepped up sanctions on Russia over its invasion of Ukraine, local environmental groups have been calling for Formosa Petrochemical, one of the nation’s major oil refiners, to boycott Russian oil to avoid providing Moscow with any economic assistance.
In a post on social media on Wednesday, Air Clean Taiwan, an environmental protection organization, said the tanker NS Point transported up to 40,000 tonnes of oil that Formosa Petrochemical bought from Russia and had arrived in Mailiao harbor that night.
Photo: Chang Hui-wen, Taipei Times
The group called on the company not to unload the oil purchase.
Formosa Petrochemical spokesperson Lin Keh-yen (林克彥) on Thursday said that the tanker was transporting oil it bought from Russia, and that the company had to proceed with the purchase or risk breaching the contract it signed with a Singaporean company.
As the transaction was conducted under a commercial contract with the Singaporean company, unilaterally breaching the contract would result in heavy losses for Formosa Petrochemical, Lin said.
Given that Taiwan has not banned imports of Russian oil, the Singaporean company would be entitled to sue for compensation for its losses had the purchase been canceled for any reason other than force majeure — unforeseeable extraordinary events — he said.
Lin did not comment on the amount of oil on board the tanker, which departed on Thursday night after the shipment was unloaded.
Lin’s remarks are at odds with a statement by Formosa Petrochemical chairman Chen Bao-lang (陳寶郎), who in February said that the company had never imported crude oil from Russia.
Air Clean Taiwan and other groups urged people to wear yellow and blue outfits, the colors of the Ukrainian flag, and join a protest outside the company’s Mailiao refinery yesterday morning.
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