Japan's biggest refiner, Eneos Corp, shut its Sendai refinery including the 145,000 bpd crude distillation unit (CDU) after a magnitude 7.3 earthquake jolted Japan's northeast coast off Fukushima late on Wednesday, reported Reuters with reference to a company spokesperson's statement.
The strong quake activated a safety shutdown system at the Sendai refinery, the spokesperson said on Thursday.
The refiner, a unit of Eneos Holdings Inc, also shut its Chiba refinery, including the 129,000 bpd CDU, as well as one of the two CDUs in its Kawasaki refinery, due to an external power outage, the spokesperson said.
Eneos does not know when the facilities will be back online, the spokesperson said, adding that there has been no confirmed damage on its facilities.
Tens of thousands of Japanese households remained without power on Thursday morning after the quake struck shortly before midnight.
As MRC wrote previously, ENEOS restarted its Sendai refinery in northeast Japanon 18 May, 2021. This refinery was hit by an earthquake on 1 May, 2021. Besides, on 18 May, the company shut down its Sakai refinery in western Japan for maintenance.
We remind that ENEOS Corporation 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, 2020.
Ethylene and propylene are the main feedstocks for the production of polyethylene (PE) and polypropylene (PP), respectively.
According to MRC's ScanPlast report, Russia's estimated PE consumption totalled 2,487,450 tonnes in 2021, up by 13% year on year. Shipments of all grades of ethylene polymers increased. At the same time, PP shipments to the Russian market totalled 1,494.280 tonnes, up by 21% year on year. Deliveries of homopolymer PP and PP block copolymers increased, whreas.shipments of PP random copolymers decreased significantly.
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