In 2013, CPC Corp, Taiwan invested in the Australian Prelude FLNG, the world’s largest floating liquefied natural gas (LNG)development project.
Now, less than a year after production started at Prelude, Taiwan is reaping the benefits: last week a large tanker holding 67,000 tonnes of LNG arrived in Kaohsiung’s Yongan Port (永安港), a highly significant event in terms of Taiwan’s energy stability and supply source diversification.
The main company behind the Prelude project is Shell, and in addition to CPC, the other investors are Japanese Inpex Corp and South Korean Korea Gas Corp.
Together with the Ichthys gas field project off the coast of Western Australia, in which CPC also has a stake, Australia is the world’s largest natural gas exporter, and is now Taiwan’s second-largest source of natural gas.
On the other hand, in August last year, CPC signed a 25-year purchasing agreement worth US$25 billion with the US’ largest LNG exporter, Cheniere Energy, which is expected to supply 2 million tonnes of LNG annually beginning in 2021.
Taiwan is currently working toward its goal of becoming nuclear-free by 2025. By that time, 50 percent of Taiwan’s energy will be supplied by LNG, 30 percent by coal-fired power plants and 20 percent by renewable energy sources.
This would require a sharp increase in the need for LNG, which means that a stable supply is a national security issue that would affect the lives of all Taiwanese.
The US and Australia have become important partners in Taiwan’s energy transformation, which is an inseparable and vital part of the US’ Indo-Pacific strategy.
The Asia EDGE: Enhancing Development and Growth through Energy initiative launched by US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo focuses on the energy security of the US’ allies in the Indo-Pacific region.
It is no secret that the main goal of the Indo-Pacific strategy is to open up the Indo-Pacific region and freedom of navigation in both the sea and the skies, along with maritime security, lie at its center in order to be able to guarantee that energy transportation routes in the region remain unobstructed.
Although the US and Australia are both major energy exporters, their competition should not stop them from working together for the common good.
In November 2017, the US and Japan set up the Japan-US Strategic Energy Partnership within the framework of the Japan-US Economic Dialogue. The main target of this partnership is to develop the natural global gas market.
In February last year, the US and Australia initiated the Australia-US Strategic Partnership on Energy in the Indo-Pacific.
This partnership includes maintaining open and competitive energy markets and helping to bring about universal access to energy. There is essentially no difference between this partnership and the partnership between the US and Japan, but it is the first to explicitly name the Indo-Pacific in its title.
In April last year, the US and India formally entered into a strategic energy partnership. That was followed by news that India would buy US LNG, as the government of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is planning to increase the proportion of LNG from the current 6 percent to 15 percent.
The US, Japan, Australia and India are the main pillars of the Indo-Pacific strategy, and their mutually beneficial energy cooperation is the most concrete result of the Indo-Pacific strategy.
The best example of this is a forum on good energy governance in the Indo-Pacific region that was recently held in Taipei with the attendance of Japan, Australia and other like-minded partner countries.
In particular, as the US takes the lead, platforms such as APEC and the US-Taiwan Global Cooperation and Training Framework are important parts of energy cooperation, which is gradually becoming a part of multilateral cooperation between Taiwan, the US, Japan and Australia.
Taiwan is not missing out on energy cooperation, the most important building block of the Indo-Pacific strategy.
Chen Yung-chang is deputy secretary-general of the Taipei Chamber of Commerce.
Translated by Perry Svensson
In the US’ National Security Strategy (NSS) report released last month, US President Donald Trump offered his interpretation of the Monroe Doctrine. The “Trump Corollary,” presented on page 15, is a distinctly aggressive rebranding of the more than 200-year-old foreign policy position. Beyond reasserting the sovereignty of the western hemisphere against foreign intervention, the document centers on energy and strategic assets, and attempts to redraw the map of the geopolitical landscape more broadly. It is clear that Trump no longer sees the western hemisphere as a peaceful backyard, but rather as the frontier of a new Cold War. In particular,
When it became clear that the world was entering a new era with a radical change in the US’ global stance in US President Donald Trump’s second term, many in Taiwan were concerned about what this meant for the nation’s defense against China. Instability and disruption are dangerous. Chaos introduces unknowns. There was a sense that the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) might have a point with its tendency not to trust the US. The world order is certainly changing, but concerns about the implications for Taiwan of this disruption left many blind to how the same forces might also weaken
As the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) races toward its 2027 modernization goals, most analysts fixate on ship counts, missile ranges and artificial intelligence. Those metrics matter — but they obscure a deeper vulnerability. The true future of the PLA, and by extension Taiwan’s security, might hinge less on hardware than on whether the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) can preserve ideological loyalty inside its own armed forces. Iran’s 1979 revolution demonstrated how even a technologically advanced military can collapse when the social environment surrounding it shifts. That lesson has renewed relevance as fresh unrest shakes Iran today — and it should
As the new year dawns, Taiwan faces a range of external uncertainties that could impact the safety and prosperity of its people and reverberate in its politics. Here are a few key questions that could spill over into Taiwan in the year ahead. WILL THE AI BUBBLE POP? The global AI boom supported Taiwan’s significant economic expansion in 2025. Taiwan’s economy grew over 7 percent and set records for exports, imports, and trade surplus. There is a brewing debate among investors about whether the AI boom will carry forward into 2026. Skeptics warn that AI-led global equity markets are overvalued and overleveraged
RSS