MOSCOW (MRC) -- Japan’s biggest refiner, JXTG Nippon Oil & Energy Corp, said on Tuesday it had resumed land shipments at its Negishi refinery, near Tokyo, in the wake of Typhoon Hagibis, while other refineries said sea shipments have been renewed, reported Reuters.
The country’s refineries remained in operation during the typhoon, the worst to hit Japan in decades, and there was no damage to facilities, refiners said.
Typhoon Hagibis made landfall on Japan’s main island of Honshu on Saturday evening, leaving large areas of towns in central and eastern Japan under water. The death toll reached 66 on Tuesday and many homes remained without power or water.
JXTG Nippon, which is a unit of JXTG Holdings Inc (5020.T), temporarily halted land shipments at the Negishi refinery due to flooding, but shipments had been restarted on Tuesday, a company spokeswoman said.
Refiners including Idemitsu Kosan, Cosmo Oil, a unit of Cosmo Energy Holdings, and Fuji Oil said sea shipments had been temporarily suspended as a precautionary measure, but all shipments had been resumed by Tuesday.
As MRC informed before, in December 2018, JXTG Nippon Oil and Energy undertook an unplanned shutdown at its cracker in Kawasaki. The company halted operations at the cracker on December 10, 2018 for maintenance work. The cracker remained off-line for around 8-10 days. Located at Kawasaki in Japan, the cracker has an ethylene production capacity of 448,000 mt/year and propylene production capacity of 273,000 mt/year.
Ethylene and propylene are feedstocks for producing polyethylene (PE) and polyprolypele (PP).
According to MRC's ScanPlast report, Russia's estimated PE consumption totalled 1,436,390 tonnes in the first eight months of 2019, up by 9% year on year. Shipments of all PE grades increased. At the same time, the PP consumption in the Russian market was 909,260 tonnes in January-August 2019, up by 10% year on year. Shipments of PP block copolymer and homopolymer PP increased.
MRC