Petrochemical companies in Taiwan hope to expand their presence in China because of the barriers they have faced domestically in developing their businesses, the head of a local petrochemical association said Monday. Preston Chen, chairman of the Petrochemical Industry Association of Taiwan, said at the 2010 Cross-Strait Petrochemical Technology and Trade Conference in Taipei that he hoped that petrochemical companies in Taiwan and China could complement each other. 'The development of Taiwan's petrochemical industry is now stagnant because of a shortage of raw materials and the difficulty of finding factory sites, ' he said in his opening remarks to the meeting. Chen has been one of the main proponents of building a new naphtha cracker plant along Taiwan's western coast in Changhua County, but the project, proposed four years ago, has yet to be approved because of environmental concerns. Frustrated over the lack of movement in getting the project started, Chen threatened to abandon plans for the new facility as recently as late July. On Monday, he said that if local petrochemical companies cannot continue to invest in Taiwan, the government should further ease restrictions and allow them to increase their investment in upstream production facilities in China. 'There is a great potential for the development of the petrochemical sector in China, and there are great investment opportunities,' he added. Chen noted that Taiwanese petrochemical companies have already invested tens of billions of U.S. dollars in factories in China. Petrochemical companies in Taiwan and China have been collaborating in the areas of oil and gas exploration, crude oil procurement, and technology exchanges since 1995, and China is now Taiwan's largest trading partner and export market for petrochemical products. In 2009, Taiwan exported nearly 9 million metric tons of petrochemical products to China. The biennial event saw the record participation of more than 600 people who listened to a number of speeches on carbon reduction, future trends and cooperation in oil tapping. It was the first time the event took place in Taiwan. 