Nippon Oil fights slowdown with reduced operating rates

28 Jan '09

1 min read

As, companies wrestle with the mounting pressures of recession, Japan's top oil refiner, Nippon Oil (Kawasaki), PX plant will run at reduced operational rates and its Oita based production facility will continue to remain under shutdown. Oita, based plant has the production capacity of 4, 20,000 ton/year, and Kawasaki plant in enable with a capacity of 3, 50,000 ton/year.

Speaking to Fibre2Fashion, industry sources confirmed that due to economic slow down, demand is poor in the market. Hence the company has kept its Oita based production facility idle while Kawasaki based unit is running at lower rate to fulfill contractual needs.

Global turmoil; proving to be a 'shape shifter' initially started as a financial crisis, and later transformed into industrial crisis. Nippon Oil has lost approximately US$ 2.8 billion due to falling feedstock prices and a resulting decrease in the value of its inventory. Weak demand of petrochemical products in the domestic and Asian markets also has caused the plant to run at reduced rates.

When asked about the duration of the shutdown, sources further mentioned that the shutdown occurred in December, but the date of resuming the plant is yet to be confirmed.

Fibre2fashion News Desk - India

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