Japan's crude and products demand drops while exports jump higher

London (Quantum Commodity Intelligence) – Japan's weekly crude throughput dropped 2.5%, or 378,541 barrels, to a 4-week low of 14.964 million barrels in the week ending June 19, but available refining capacity also dropped and utilisation rates jumped 4.4 percentage points as a result, according to Petroleum Association Japan statistics Wednesday.

Crude oil stocks gained 1.748 million barrels over the same period to 69.656 million barrels, far outstripping the fall in refineries' crude intake, implying healthy imports of oil for the week.

Meanwhile, both closing stocks and exports of refined products increased, implying a likely sharp drop in domestic demand for some products and a likely increase in imports.

Implied demand figures, which do not include the impact of imports, showed all products except diesel register double-digit percentage falls.

Jet consumption, in particular, was indicated at an unfeasibly low 25,881 barrels, compared to a 4-week average of a little over 495,000 barrels, meaning that a significant amount of jet must have been imported.

Inventories finished higher for all products apart from fuel oil type A, for which stocks dropped 3.1% to 4.755 million barrels.

The amount of exports recorded was also up for all products except diesel, which saw outflows fall 64% to 224,950 barrels.

Jet exports gained 46.2% to 590,704 barrels, while gasoline exports were 244,113 barrels up from none the prior week.

Fuel oil type C exports more than doubled to 1.195 million barrels.

New Covid cases in Japan continue to fall as vaccination rates increase and the state of emergency in Tokyo and six other regions has been downgraded starting June 20 and until July 11, two weeks before the Tokyo Olympics are set to start.