Taiwan is working to increase energy inventories in a move to boost the nation’s resilience in the event of a crisis, Deputy Minister of Economic Affairs Tseng Wen-sheng (曾文生) said, as China stepped up military pressure to try to force Taiwan to accept Chinese rule.
China’s blockade drills around Taiwan in August after a visit to Taipei by US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi have heightened concerns on the nation about the prospect of an attack by its neighbor, which has not ruled out using force to bring Taiwan under its control.
Tseng told Reuters in an interview that the government is ramping up its natural gas and coal inventories, part of President Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) push to strengthen Taiwan’s “resilience” in an emergency amid growing global geopolitical and economic uncertainties.
Photo: CNA
“When it does happen, we need to be able to undertake pressure to a certain degree,” Tseng said, answering questions on the prospect of a Chinese blockade or attack on trade-reliant Taiwan, which imports 98 percent of its energy.
By building new storage facilities across Taiwan, the ministry is planning to raise natural gas inventories to more than 20 days by 2030, up from the current level of 11 days, he said.
Tseng said coal inventories would be increased in the coming years, while those for crude would continue at a level of more than 100 days.
He declined to give details, as making such information public “does no good to Taiwan.”
Taiwanese authorities have been looking at Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the country’s resistance in the event China ever makes good on its threat to attack Taiwan, including studying war tactics and using satellites to communicate with the outside world.
Elon Musk’s lieutenants have reached out to chip industry suppliers, including Applied Materials Inc, Tokyo Electron Ltd and Lam Research Corp, for his envisioned Terafab, early steps in an audacious and likely arduous attempt to break into the production of cutting-edge chips. Staff working for the joint venture between Tesla Inc and Space Exploration Technologies Corp (SpaceX) have sought price quotes and delivery times for an array of chipmaking gear, people familiar with the matter said. In past weeks, they’ve contacted makers of photomasks, substrates, etchers, depositors, cleaning devices, testers and other tools, according to the people, who asked not to
Taichung reported the steepest fall in completed home prices among the six special municipalities in the first quarter of this year, data compiled by Taiwan Realty Co (台灣房屋) showed yesterday. From January through last month, the average transaction price for completed homes in Taichung fell 8 percent from a year earlier to NT$299,000 (US$9,483) per ping (3.3m²), said Taiwan Realty, which compiled the data based on the government’s price registration platform. The decline could be attributed to many home buyers choosing relatively affordable used homes to live in themselves, instead of newly built homes in the city’s prime property market, Taiwan Realty
JET JUICE: The war on Iran’s secondary effects have seen fuel prices skyrocket, knocking flight schedules down to earth in return as airlines struggle with costs Airline passengers should brace for more irritation in the next few months as carriers worldwide cancel flights and ground planes to cope with stratospheric increases in jet-fuel prices. Dutch flag carrier KLM is the latest company to cut its schedule, saying on Thursday that it would scrap 80 return flights at Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport in the coming month. That puts it in the same league as United Airlines Holdings Inc, Deutsche Lufthansa AG and Cathay Pacific Airways Ltd, which have all pruned itineraries to mitigate costs. Global capacity for next month has been reduced by about 3 percentage points, with all
Taiwan is attracting a growing number of foreign jobseekers as companies increasingly recruit overseas talent to ease labor shortages and expand global reach, recruitment platform 104 Job Bank (104人力銀行) said yesterday. More than 40,000 foreign nationals searched for jobs in Taiwan through the platform last year, a 28 percent increase from a year earlier, the company said. Malaysians accounted for the largest share of overseas jobseekers at 12.2 percent, followed by Indonesians at 11.9 percent and Vietnamese at 10.8 percent. Indonesian applicants surged more than 50 percent year-on-year, while Vietnamese jobseekers rose by more than 30 percent. Applicants from the
RSS