Offline refinery capacity doubles in Japan

摘要

With the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak weighing on jet fuel and gasoil demand, Japanese refineries have 11% of capacity offline currently, compared to 5% in Jan. The country's refiners are now currently reevaluating plans for the coming months as a number of airlines have cut flights to China due to the outbreak, which has already caused gasoil, gasoline, and jet fuel exports to fall year-on-year by 45% to 1.85MM bbl (66K b/d), 32% to 3.54MM bbl (126K b/d), and 5% to 4.86MM bbl (174K b/d) in the four weeks ending Feb 22. Besides COVID-19, another factor weighing on demand are warmer temperatures, which have caused kerosene consumption to fall to the lowest levels in 50 years. This month, kerosene demand is estimated to be 12.64MM bbl (436K b/d), a 10% decrease on the year. Petroleum Association of Japan (PAJ) President Takashi Tsukioka said, "We are extremely concerned about decreasing gasoil demand beyond March because of expected slowdowns in demand for transporting containers by trucks because the number of container ships from China are decreasing significandy."