Closures, spring maintenance to drive imports into Japan.

摘要

While the country has seen refining capacity shrink by 19.2% since April 2008 to 3.95MM b/d as of March 31 in order to meet new government mandates on an average cracking/CDU ratio of 13%, Japan was still a net exporter of fuels as domestic demand has been weakening for several years. However, the country is expected to need to ramp up imports of low-sulfur fuel oil and naphtha and cut exports of diesel and high-sulfur fuel oil through June as a number of domestic refineries are brought down for spring maintenance. 0.9-1.2MM b/d of refining capacity— representing 23-30% of total Japanese capacity—is expected to be down in May and June for turnarounds with online capacity set to average 3.04MM b/d in May and 2.75MM b/d in June while actual throughput levels in those months will be 2.58MM b/d and 2.34MM b/d, respectively. Compared to year-ago levels, crude throughput will be down 510K b/d in May and 820K b/d in June, leading to the need for greater import levels. Domestic refiner Idemitsu Kosan noted that it plans to refine an average of 415K b/d of crude for domestic consumption in April-June, down 3% from the same period in 2013.