Taipower Files Maanshan Restart Plan as JKM Holds Above $27 on Asian LNG Pressure
Taiwan's first nuclear restart submission arrives with JKM front-month Asian LNG at $27.51/MMBtu, well above the three-year high flagged in June.
Taipower submitted a restart plan for the Maanshan nuclear power plant on Thursday (2026-09-17), less than a year after Taiwan powered down its last operating reactor, OilPrice.com reported. JKM front-month Asian LNG was trading at $27.51/MMBtu on Monday (2026-09-21), above the $25/MMBtu mark that Foreign Policy described as a three-year high in early June 2026 (2026-06-02), when European and Asian buyers were already competing for the same Atlantic Basin cargoes with European storage sitting at around 30 percent capacity.6,2
Taiwan's exposure to that price level is more acute than most buyers in the region. The island has no cross-border pipeline connections, so LNG underpins its gas-fired generation with no equivalent fallback. Interim fixes are in place but none are structural. Two coal units at the Mailiao power plant have been brought back online, and the 2.1-gigawatt Hsinta backup facility is being readied for activation for at least three months, with extensions possible, energynewsbeat.com reported in May 2026 (2026-05-19).1
Taipei has also moved to reduce direct spot exposure. Taiwan suspended approximately 500,000 metric tons of semi-annual LNG purchases from Papua New Guinea — removing roughly $800 million of spot-market demand per six-month cycle — after Port Moresby ordered the closure of Taipei's representative office, OilPrice.com reported in July 2026 (2026-07-29). Analysts expect producers to redirect those cargoes to other Asian buyers, with limited disruption to overall export volumes.4
The coal restarts and purchase suspensions address immediate budget pressure, not the underlying supply position. The disruption to Middle East supply routes from the U.S.-Israeli conflict with Iran roughly doubled spot LNG prices, while Asian LNG imports registered their steepest decline in recent memory as regional buyers substituted coal, energynewsbeat.com reported in May 2026 (2026-05-19). India ordered imported-coal plants to operate at full capacity through June. Thailand reactivated mothballed units at Mae Moh, lifting output from 700 megawatts to 1,300 megawatts.1
The regional pivot to coal has been swift and broad. Wood Mackenzie forecast Asia Pacific LNG demand declining for a second consecutive year as Middle East conflict reshapes supply flows, according to World Pipelines in July 2026 (2026-07-14). Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry announced a one-year suspension of the capacity-factor cap on older coal plants running from April 2026 through March 2027, expected to displace around 0.7 billion cubic metres of gas demand. South Korea lifted its 80 percent capacity ceiling on coal plants and postponed the retirement of three units totalling 1.5 gigawatts. Coal already covers about 29 percent of Japan's power mix.3,1
Nuclear would offer Taiwan a more durable answer than coal, but the Maanshan submission carries legal complexity the coal fixes do not. The Taipei Times reported in August 2026 (2026-08-03) that every arrangement governing Taiwan's nuclear fuel cycle shares one feature: Taipei signed none of them under its own name. The 123 agreement covering civil nuclear cooperation was negotiated by the American Institute in Taiwan, not by the government in Taipei directly.5
That does not block a restart. But it means third-party processes must run their course on a timeline Taipei does not set. Safety reviews, regulatory approvals, and fuel cycle logistics all sit outside the island's unilateral control, and each stage takes time.5
The Maanshan plan has been filed. The distance between that submission and actual nuclear output is measured in years. With JKM front-month at $27.51/MMBtu on Monday (2026-09-21), the cost of each passing year without domestic baseload capacity is denominated in real LNG import bills — and Taiwan has no pipeline hedge to soften it.6,5