31 Mar 2020 | 10:45 UTC — Tokyo

JAPAN DATA: Warm winter slashes Feb heating oil demand to 50-year low

Highlights

Kerosene, A fuel sales in Feb lowest for month since 1970

Jet fuel sales for domestic flights dropped 3.6%

Refiners cut crude runs on reduced demand for heating fuels

Tokyo — The warmer than usual winter in February slashed Japan's heating oil demand to the lowest in 50 years for the month, preliminary data released Tuesday by the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry showed.

The domestic sales of kerosene, which is used as heating oil in Japan, dropped 7.6% year on year to 448,101 b/d in February, which was the lowest for the month since 1970, according to METI data.

Demand for A-fuel, a blend of gasoil and fuel oil in a 90:10 ratio, which is also partly used for heating at industrial plants, dropped to 227,600 b/d in February, the lowest for the month since 1970, METI data showed.

Jet fuel sales for domestic flights declined 3.6% year on year to 80,785 b/d in February.

The plummeted heating oil demand during the peak demand month of February led Japanese refiners to cut their crude runs and more than doubled their refinery outage to 11% in the month from 5% in January amid increasing signs of slowing jet fuel and gasoil demand as the coronavirus spread.

JAPAN'S OIL PRODUCT SALES IN FEBRUARY 2020

Unit: b/d

Feb-20
Feb-19
% Change
Jan-20
% Change
Gasoline
819,088
822,378
-0.4
757,982
8.1
Naphtha
776,156
818,730
-5.2
759,156
2.2
Jet Fuel
80,785
83,802
-3.6
78,734
2.6
Kerosene
448,101
484,958
-7.6
428,644
4.5
Gasoil
594,895
584,951
1.7
489,792
21.5
Fuel Oil A
227,600
239,831
-5.1
184,971
23.0
Fuel Oil B, C
144,626
167,779
-13.8
125,524
15.2
Total
3,091,251
3,203,369
-3.5
2,824,803
9.4

Source: Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry

METI publishes its data in kiloliters, which S&P Global Platts converts to barrels using a rate of 6.2898.

Platts also takes into account revisions made by METI to data published in previous months.

Editor:

Claudia Carpenter