MOSCOW (MRC) -- Japan's biggest oil refiner Eneos Holdings Inc will shift its joint venture with PetroChina Co to Eneos' Chiba refinery after shutting the venture's Osaka refinery next month, reported Reuters with reference to Eneos' statement on Friday.
Eneos plans to close the 115,000 barrel per day (bpd) Osaka refinery that it jointly operated with Petrochina next month amid falling demand for fuel in Japan.
Eneos, formerly known as JXTG, said that the joint venture, which is 51% held by Eneos and the rest by PetroChina, will take over the 129,000-bpd Chiba refinery near Tokyo from December.
"We came to the conclusion that utilizing Chiba refinery's export capacity would contribute the most to a further development of our joint venture which is aimed at strengthening the foundation of stable energy supply in the Asia-Pacific region," Eneos said in a statement.
The Chiba refinery will process crude supplied by PetroChina and export refined products which will be marketed by PetroChina, an Eneos spokeswoman said. She declined to comment where the products will be sold.
The two companies formed the joint venture and started jointly operating the Osaka refinery in 2010, with a view that demand for oil products would grow in the Asia-Pacific region while that in Japan would decline.
The Osaka plant will be converted to an asphalt-fueled electric power station after ending refining operations.
As MRC wrote earlier, Eneos Corporation has taken off-stream its fluid catalytic cracker (FCC) unit owing to technical issues. The company undertook an unplanned shutdown at the unit around September 7, 2020. The unit is likely to remain off-line for around 15 days. Located at Chiba in Japan, the FCC unit has a propylene capacity of 50,000 mt/year.
According to MRC's ScanPlast report, overall PP production in Russia increased in January-July 2020 by 24% year on year to 1,063,700 tonne. ZapSibNeftekhim accounted for the main increase in the output.
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.
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