Eneos to shut refinery amid falling demand

Japan’s biggest oil refiner Eneos Holdings will shift its joint venture with PetroChina to Eneos’ Chiba refinery after shutting the venture’s Osaka refinery next month, Eneos said 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 percent 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.