MOSCOW (MRC) -- All units at ENEOS' 145,000 b/d Sendai refinery in northeast Japan automatically shutdown after a strong earthquake offshore Fukushima late Feb. 13, reported S&P Global with reference to a spokesman at the country's largest refiner's statement early Feb. 14.
A few unidentified units at ENEOS' 270,000 b/d Negishi refinery in Tokyo Bay also shutdown due to a power outage triggered by the earthquake, he added.
It was not immediately clear when ENEOS will be able to restart the Sendai and Negishi refining units, the spokesman said.
The earthquake hit offshore Fukushima at a depth of 55 km at 11:07 pm local time (1407 GMT) Feb. 13, and the magnitude was revised tentatively to 7.3 from a preliminary 7.1, according to the Japan Meteorological Agency.
As MRC informed before, ENEOS Corporation (formerly known as JXTG Nippon Oil & Energy) restarted its naphtha cracker in Kawasaki on 1 February 2021. The company shut this cracker with an annual capacity of 515,000 tons/year of ethylene, 300,000 tons/year of propylene, and 105,000 tons/year of butadiene on 4 December, 2020, for repairment after a technical issue reported at the butadiene separation unit and initially planned to resume operations on 28 December.
Ethylene and propylene are feedstocks for producing polyethylene (PE) and polypropylene (PP).
According to MRC's ScanPlast report, Russia's estimated PE consumption totalled 2,220,640 tonnes in 2020, up by 2% year on year. Only shipments of low density polyethylene (LDPE) and high density polyethylene (HDPE) increased. At the same time, polypropylene (PP) shipments to the Russian market reached 1 240,000 tonnes in 2020 (calculated using the formula: production, minus exports, plus imports, excluding producers' inventories as of 1 January, 2020). Supply of exclusively PP random copolymer increased.
Japan's largest refiner JXTG Nippon Oil & Energy was renamed ENEOS Corporation on 25 June, 2020, as part of a wider re-organization of the parent company JXTG Holdings. The move, which also involved renaming the parent company to ENEOS Holdings upon approval at its annual shareholders meeting in June 2020, comes as it strives to be a more comprehensive energy and materials company under its 2040 vision announced in May, 2019. JXTG Holdings was formed as a result of a merger between JX Holdings and TonenGeneral in April 2017. This followed the establishment of JX Holdings as a result of the merger between Nippon Oil and Nippon Mining Holdings in April 2010.
MRC