The nation has sufficient energy reserves, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday, dispelling concerns over energy disruption after China announced it would hold live-fire drills in waters surrounding Taiwan from today to Sunday.
The drills are in retaliation for US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan. The planned exercises stoked fears that energy shipments could be delayed and put Taiwan’s energy supply at risk.
The ministry said in a statement that the government has accumulated energy reserves for local consumption through state-run companies.
Photo: CNA
All vital energy stocks exceed regulatory safety levels, it said.
As building up energy reserves is an issue of national security, the government has made numerous contingency plans against Chinese military exercises, the ministry said.
“The nation has rules to keep energy reserves at safe levels. Besides, we have multiple energy sources,” the ministry said. “We are well-prepared with sufficient energy reserves. The public should not be worried about supply disruptions.”
The nation has crude oil reserves equivalent to 146 days of consumption, while natural gas reserves are at a level equivalent to 10 to 11 days of local consumption, the ministry said.
The nation’s coal stockpiles are sufficient for 39 days, it said.
To keep the nation’s energy reserves in check, the ministry is monitoring energy stocks with Taiwan Power Co (台電) and CPC Corp, Taiwan (台灣中油) on a daily basis, the statement said.
In light of China’s planned drills, gas suppliers are rerouting or reducing the speed of some liquefied natural gas (LNG) tankers en route to North Asia, people familiar with the matter said.
Shipments to Taiwan and Japan this weekend would be affected, the people said.
Shipping companies are also assessing their options and the actions threaten to disrupt one of the world’s busiest waterways.
Local branches of China’s maritime safety administration have issued multiple warnings for ships to avoid certain territories, citing the military exercises, while Taiwan’s Maritime and Port Bureau warned ships to find alternative routes to access and depart from seven major ports in Taiwan during China’s drills, the Chinese-language Apple Daily reported yesterday.
While the disruptions could exacerbate a shortage of LNG amid an energy crunch, delays of a few days are not uncommon. Shippers often face typhoons at this time of year that create similar disruptions.
Additional reporting by Bloomberg
US-based tech giant Google said yesterday that its efforts to build four underseas cables to connect Taiwan with the world had created more than 64,000 jobs and generated about US$26 billion in GDP for Taiwan as of 2021. The US company has transformed Taiwan into a strategic cloud infrastructure hub in the world. The four undersea cables are part of the company’s investments in cloud infrastructure in Taiwan, and on the back of the undersea cables, a data center and a Google Cloud Region, which is a geographic area in which Google provides infrastructure and services for deploying applications, Google said in
Huawei Technologies Co (華為) largely omitted mention of its controversial Mate 60 smartphone series at a grand showcase of its new consumer products yesterday. The Shenzhen-based company would increase smartphone production in response to demand, said consumer division chief Richard Yu (余承東), without naming the handset triggering that surge. The Mate 60 Pro earned international notoriety with its advanced made-in-China processor last month, causing concern in Washington about Huawei’s progress toward developing in-house chipmaking capabilities despite US trade curbs. Huawei’s new phones have fired up the company’s sales and were among the top sellers in China in the week before Apple Inc’s
SLUMP: The electronics, machinery and traditional industries posted the largest decline in the past year; overall, sectors showed gains over the previous month Taiwan’s industrial production index decreased 10.53 percent year-on-year to 91.38 last month, falling for a 15th consecutive month on an annual basis, as weak global economic growth continued to weigh on end-market demand and investment momentum, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said on Saturday. The industrial production index gauges output in Taiwan’s four main industries: manufacturing, electricity and gas supply, water supply, and mining and quarrying. Last month’s decline was the smallest contraction since March when the index dropped 16.03 percent from a year earlier. On a monthly basis, the index rose 7.28 percent, marking a second straight month of improvement,
Micron Technology Inc on Wednesday predicted a steeper loss than anticipated in the current quarter, indicating that an industry slump is still weighing on the largest US maker of memory chips. The company projected a fiscal first-quarter loss of as much as US$1.14 a share, excluding some items. Analysts had estimated a US$0.96 loss. On the bright side, revenue is expected to start recovering in the period. Micron predicted sales of US$4.2 billion to US$4.6 billion, compared with an estimate of US$4.21 billion. For Micron and competitors Samsung Electronics Co and SK Hynix Inc, this year has been brutal. Customers in their
RSS