TOKYO: Japan’s biggest oil refiner Eneos Holdings Inc. has no plans to buy Russian crude until all problems related to the Ukraine crisis are over and will purchase alternative supplies from the Middle East, its chairman said on Wednesday.
“For now, we intend to get alternatives from existing trading partners such as Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi and Kuwait, but we will continue our efforts to diversify our sources to reduce reliance on the Middle East in the future,” Tsutomu Sugimori, chairman of Eneos Holdings, told reporters.
Last month, Sugimori said that Eneos had stopped buying Russian crude in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which Moscow calls a “special operation.”
Japan was a buyer of Russian crude in 2021.
The United States said in March it would sell 180 million barrels of crude from its Strategic Petroleum Reserve at a rate of 1 million barrels per day starting in May to help dampen the surge in prices following the Ukraine crisis. This represents the biggest release from the stockpile since it was created in the 1970s.
Members of the International Energy Agency, including Japan, are releasing an additional 60 million barrels.
“It’s a fairly large volume and it will have a certain effect on oil market,” said Sugimori, also president of the Petroleum Association of Japan.
On Wednesday, the yen fell to a new two-decade low against the US dollar, weighed down by Japan’s ultra-low interest-rate policy, which contrasts with the US Federal Reserve’s rate increases.
The weaker yen tends to have positive impact for Japan’s oil industry, Sugimori said, as it boosts its competitiveness in exports.
“Asian petroleum products market is very strong,” he said.
“We want to raise run rate of our refineries as much as possible and increase export as it’s quite profitable right now,” he said.
Japan is expected to face a tight electricity market again this summer and winter.
Eneos is getting requests from utilities to double the supply of fuel oil used in oil-fired power stations in April-September from a year earlier, Sugimori said.
“We won’t be able to fully respond to the requests, but we want to do so as much as possible,” he said.
Japan refiner Eneos to buy alternative to Russian crude from Middle East
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Japan refiner Eneos to buy alternative to Russian crude from Middle East
- Japan was a buyer of Russian crude in 2021
Work suspended on Riyadh’s massive Mukaab megaproject: Reuters
RIYADH: Saudi Arabia has suspended planned construction of a colossal cube-shaped skyscraper at the center of a downtown development in Riyadh while it reassesses the project's financing and feasibility, four people familiar with the matter said.
The Mukaab was planned as a 400-meter by 400-meter metal cube containing a dome with an AI-powered display, the largest on the planet, that visitors could observe from a more than 300-meter-tall ziggurat — or terraced structure —inside it.
Its future is now unclear, with work beyond soil excavation and pilings suspended, three of the people said. Development of the surrounding real estate is set to continue, five people familiar with the plans said.
The sources include people familiar with the project's development and people privy to internal deliberations at the PIF.
Officials from PIF, the Saudi government and the New Murabba project did not respond to Reuters requests for comment.
Real estate consultancy Knight Frank estimated the New Murabba district would cost about $50 billion — roughly equivalent to Jordan’s GDP — with projects commissioned so far valued at around $100 million.
Initial plans for the New Murabba district called for completion by 2030. It is now slated to be completed by 2040.
The development was intended to house 104,000 residential units and add SR180 billion to the Kingdom’s GDP, creating 334,000 direct and indirect jobs by 2030, the government had estimated previously.
(With Reuters)
