TAIPEI (Reuters) -Taiwan’s economy minister said on Wednesday that privately-run refiners are willing to stop buying Russian naphtha should the EU ask them too, after a group of non-governmental organisations criticised the island’s continued business with the country.
While Taiwan joined the United States and major Western allies in putting broad sanctions on Russia after it invaded Ukraine in 2022, it did not explicitly ban imports of energy, a major hard currency earner for Russia.
Last week a group of NGOs including the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA) criticised Taiwan’s continued imports of Russian naphtha. While Taiwan state-owned firms stopped importing Russian oil in 2023, there is no restriction on private companies to continue doing so.
Taking lawmaker questions at parliament, Economy Minister Kung Ming-hsin said his ministry had spoken with Formosa Petrochemical, which continues to buy Russian naphtha, and also spoken with the European Union to ask their views.
“We will respect and abide by EU and G7 norms,” Kung said. “According to what I understand, next year the EU might say no more purchases.”
“We can only discuss this with our private companies, and they are willing to comply,” he added, when asked whether Taiwan would stop buying naphtha completely from Russia.
“If the EU says next year, no more purchases, then they will make no more purchases.”
Formosa spokesperson K.Y. Lin declined to comment on government guidance.
For the company, Russian naphtha remains the cheapest feedstock at a time when petrochemical makers are struggling with losses, yet continued imports has been drawing international scrutiny.
“We simply expect markets to offer us competitive prices for buying. We buy from everywhere, there is no preference, Russian naphtha is cheaper than most, say Middle Eastern or Indian naphtha,” Lin told Reuters last week after the CREA report was released.
Formosa, Asia’s single largest importer of the petrochemical feedstock naphtha, buys its supplies through open-market tenders.
“We go for open bids via our tenders to buy naphtha, so it is not the case that we buy from Russia … whichever is the lowest bid in the open market, we go with that, and Russian naphtha has been competitive,” Lin added.
“But for October delivery, we did not buy from Russia at all because there were no offers,” he said.
Taiwan has imported 75,000 barrels per day of Russian naphtha so far this year, up from 71,000 bpd in 2024, data from shiptracker Kpler showed.
(Reporting by Jeanny Kao and Ben Blanchard in Taipei, Mohi Narayan in New Delhi; Editing by Kim Coghill)
