Taiwan’s natural gas supply remains stable through the end of May, despite rising concerns about potential disruptions to Qatari liquefied natural gas (LNG) supplies due to escalating conflicts in the Middle East, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday.
The ministry in a statement said that Taiwan has completed preparations for natural gas supply and shipping schedules through the end of May.
It has also made plans to increase natural gas imports from regions outside the Middle East in June to ensure a stable supply, it added.
Photo: Ann Wang, Reuters
Taiwan sources natural gas from 14 countries and is not solely dependent on the Middle East, the ministry said.
In response to heightened geopolitical tensions in the Middle East, state-run CPC Corp, Taiwan (台灣中油) has further expanded its allocation of gas sources outside the Middle East to ensure sufficient gas supply, it said.
“There is absolutely no natural gas shortage crisis as reported by foreign media,” the ministry said.
The remarks came after the Financial Times on Sunday reported that the Middle East’s LNG supplies would abruptly end within 10 days, when final tankers from the region reach their destinations.
The report warned of a potential “cliff edge” in the global natural gas supply, which would affect countries like Taiwan that are highly dependent on the region’s energy supplies.
Taiwan sources about one-third of its natural gas from Qatar. In June 2024, CPC signed a 27-year LNG supply deal with QatarEnergy to secure long-term supplies.
However, the emirate’s state-run energy firm last week said it could declare force majeure on long-term supply contracts following attacks from Iran on its major LNG facilities in Ras Laffan.
The ministry yesterday said that it has established an energy response team to conduct daily inventory checks and dispatches on natural gas.
The nation’s natural gas stockpiles are above the legally mandated minimum, which ensures that domestic gas and power supplies remain secure, it said.
Global LNG exports have fallen to a six-month low, with the 10-day moving average for LNG shipments down about 20 percent from the start of this month to 1.1 million tonnes, a Bloomberg analysis of ship-tracking data on Kpler showed.
The drop is primarily from Qatar — and to a lesser extent the United Arab Emirates — due to Iran’s effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz, a vital waterway for about one-fifth of global LNG flows, Bloomberg News reported yesterday.
STRONG INTEREST: Analysts have pointed to optimism in TSMC’s growth prospects in the artificial intelligence era as the cause of the rising number of shareholders The number of people holding shares of chipmaker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) hit a new high last week despite a decline in its stock price, the Taiwan Depository and Clearing Corp (TDCC, 台灣集保) said. The number of TSMC shareholders rose to 2.46 million as of Friday, up 75,536 from a week earlier, TDCC data showed. The stock price fell 1.34 percent during the same week to close at NT$1,840 (US$57.55). The decline in TSMC’s share price resulted from volatility in global tech stocks, driven by rising international crude oil prices as the war against Iran continues. Dealers said
PRICE HIKES: The war in the Middle East would not significantly disrupt supply in the short term, but semiconductor companies are facing price surges for materials Taiwan’s semiconductor companies are not facing imminent supply disruptions of essential chemicals or raw materials due to the war in the Middle East, but surges in material costs loom large, industry association SEMI Taiwan said yesterday. The association’s comments came amid growing concerns that supplies of helium and other key raw materials used in semiconductor production could become a choke point after Qatar shut down its liquefied natural gas (LNG) production and helium output earlier this month due to the conflict. Qatar is the second-largest LNG supplier in the world and accounts for about 33 percent of global helium output. Helium is
DOMESTIC COMPONENT: Huang identified several Taiwanese partners to be a key part of Nvidia’s Vera Rubin supply chain, including Asustek, Hon Hai and Wistron Nvidia Corp chief executive officer Jensen Huang (黃仁勳), addressing crowds at the company’s biggest annual event, unveiled a variety of new products while predicting that its flagship artificial intelligence (AI) processors would help generate US$1 trillion in sales through next year. During a two-and-a-half-hour keynote address, Huang announced plans to push deeper into central processing units (CPUs) — Intel Corp’s home turf — and introduced semiconductors made with technology acquired from start-up Groq Inc. The company even said it was developing chips for data centers in outer space. At the heart of Huang’s speech was the message that demand for computing power
China is clamping down on fertilizer exports to protect its domestic market, industry sources said, putting an additional strain on global markets that were already grappling with shortages caused by the US-Israeli war on Iran. China is among the largest fertilizer exporters — shipping more than US$13 billion of it last year — and it has a history of controlling exports to keep prices low for farmers. Shipments through the war-blocked Strait of Hormuz account for about one-third of the sea-borne supply. This month, Beijing banned exports of nitrogen-potassium fertilizer blends and certain phosphate varieties, sources said. The ban, which has not
RSS