Taiwan’s state-owned Kuokuang Petrochemical Technology Company (KPTC) has confirmed dropping its RM35 billion investment proposal in Pengerang, Johor, citing changes in the macro environment of the industry as a main reason. Scrapping the Malaysia investment plan will result only in limited losses of preliminary research costs. Kuokuang signed a letter of intent on land investment with the Johor government in July last year. The investment proposal passed a detailed environment impact assessment (DEIA) last month, and the report is now under the scrutiny of environment ministry.
Lin Sheng-Chung, chairman of CPC Corp. which controls KPTC, told Taiwan’s Commercial Times that the global trend of shale gas extraction has impacted on the performance of naphtha cracking. Using ethane in shale gas as the raw material for ethylene only costs half of the amount as compared to using conventional raw material, naphtha. Since shale gas extraction is more cost-effective, the company needed to reconsider all its investment proposals abroad that were of naphtha cracking nature. Also, KPTC is making a series of investments in China.
19-Aug-13 
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