Japan quake impact on energy, commodities and ports

The following is a roundup of the effect on the energy and commodities sector of the devastating earthquake and tsunami that struck the northeast coast of Japan.

For details of utility, refinery, smelter and port status:

Utilities

- Tokyo Electric Power said it would implement only part of planned rollover power outages on Monday as demand was not as high as it expected.

- It said it expected 330,000 households to be affected. The measures were put in place to cope with power shortages in the wake of Friday's devastating earthquake.

- TEPCO is preparing to put sea water into the No 2 reactor at its Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, Jiji news agency quoted the electric company as saying on Sunday. Cooling functions at the plant, in northern Japan, were damaged after a massive earthquake and tsunami on Friday.

- TEPCO is already injecting sea water into the No 1 and No 3 units at the plant to cool them down and reduce pressure inside reactor container vessels.

- TEPCO said on Sunday it had resumed generating electricity from the oil-fired 350-megawatt No 3 unit at its Oi power station in Tokyo. The 350-MW No 2 unit at the plant remains closed after an earthquake.

Refineries

- Japan's Cosmo Oil has not yet extinguished a fire at its 220,000 barrels per day Chiba refinery. The fire at the storage tanks broke out after a powerful earthquake rocked the country on Friday. The company shut down the refinery, east of Tokyo after the quake.

- JX Holdings said a fire at its Sendai refinery originated from a land oil product shipping facility nearby, not an LPG tank as feared earlier.

- JX Holdings has declared force majeure on its refined product supplies as its stocks were depleted and distributions were disrupted. The company said it was working to boost output at its refineries that were still operating and diverting products to domestic use instead of exports to meet a supply shortfall.

- Maruzen Petrochemical Co Ltd said it shut its sole naphtha cracker in Chiba, east of Tokyo, with capacity to produce 480,000 tonnes per year of ethylene, after a strong earthquake. Maruzen's Keiyo Ethylene unit kept operating a 690,000 tpy naphtha cracker in Chiba after the quake, a Maruzen spokesman said.

- Kyokuto Petroleum said its 175,000 barrels per day (bpd) Chiba refinery won't reopen until tomorrow at least.

- JX Holdings shut its 404,000 tonnes per year Kawasaki naphtha cracker near Tokyo on Friday after the quake.

- Japan's Exxon Mobil group refiner TonenGeneral Sekiyu KK said on Monday it was preparing to restart its 335,000 barrels per day Kawasaki plant, near Tokyo, which was shut after Friday's strong earthquake. It added it was doing its best to boost gasoline output at its Sakai and Wakayama plants to help ease a supply shortage in areas hit by the quake.

- Mitsubishi Chemical said it had halted two naphtha crackers at its Kashima plant after a power outage.

- AOC Holdings said its 140,000-bpd Sodegaura refinery was still operating but it had cut runs of two fluid catalytic cracking units.

Metals

- JFE Steel, the world's No 5 steelmaker, on Monday halted production at a plant near Tokyo and global fourth-ranked Nippon Steel suspended operations at two small plants.

- JFE said shipments from its 10 million tonnes per year Higashi Nihon plant near Tokyo had virtually halted due to a power outage.

- JFE resumed operations on Sunday of two blast furnaces at its Higashi Nihon plant, one of its two mainstay plants, which were idled after Friday's quake and tsunami.

- Sumitomo Metal Industries Ltd, Japan's No 3 steelmaker, said production at its main Kashima plant in Ibaraki prefecture remained suspended.

- Sumitomo Metal's main Kashima plant had a fire in a gas holder, which had been extinguished but the company did not know yet when the plant would resume operations. Sumitomo Metal has a total capacity of 14 million tonnes a year and the Kashima plant produces 8.3 million tonnes.

- Global fourth-ranked Nippon Steel's main Kimitsu plant in Tokyo, with a capacity of 10 million tonnes and three blast furnaces had resumed operations on Sunday. Nippon Steel's total production capacity stands at about 33 million tonnes a year.

- But the tsunami hit Nippon's small Kamaishi plant which is not operating. It produces 60,000 tonnes a month of downstream steel products. The company also briefly shut a small seamless steel plant in Tokyo on Monday due to power outage.

Ports

- Japanese ports handling as much as 7% of the country's industrial output sustained major damage from last week's earthquake, disrupting global supply chains and causing billions of dollars in losses.

- The box shipping industry was seen as the most strongly affected by the disaster as the destroyed ports handled containerised cargo for Hitachi Ltd, Daikin Industries, and dozens of other companies.

- Tokyo and all ports south of Japan's capital were operating normally after briefly shutting down operations following Friday's disaster, while the rest of the country's ports were being assessed for damage.

- The northeast coast ports of Hachinohe, Sendai, Ishinomaki and Onahama were so severely damaged by Friday's disaster that they were not expected to return to operation for months, if not years.

- The closure of the ports was expected to cost Japan more than USD 3.4 billion in lost seaborne trade each day, according to shipping trade publication Lloyd's List Intelligence. Maritime trade in the world's No 3 economy totalled USD 1.5 trillion last year.

- Japan's Sendai Gas said on Monday it was unable to reach the tsunami-hit Shinminato liquefied natural gas terminal near the port of Sendai in the country's northeast, but the terminal appeared undamaged from a distance.