Japanese refners have weathered the short-term impact of Covid-19 through 2020, but now face a fresh challenge as the government’s focus on decarbonising the economy adds urgency to capacity rationalisation eforts. The pandemic cut Japan’s oil product demand by 10pc on the year to 2.3mn b/d in April-September. But gasoline and middle distillate consumption has now almost totally recovered, refners say, although a full bounce-back for jet fuel looks months away at least. Japan’s oil product demand is likely to hit 2.6mn b/d over the full April 2020 to March 2021 fscal year, a drop of 4pc from 2019-20, and then recover slightly to 2.7mn b/d in 2021-22, energy think-tank the IEEJ says.
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