
Last year’s Japanese earthquake disaster has caused the country’s oil demand to increase this year. Not only have the rebuilding efforts been supporting higher oil consumption, but the shutdown of nuclear plants has also required the use of oil in several power plants. The latest February monthly data is dominated by huge increases in crude direct use and residual fuel oil, as a result of the shutdown of almost all the Japanese nuclear plants (51 out of 52). In addition, stricter stress-tests, as one of several conditions for their restarting, and the use of direct crude and residual fuel burning for electricity production are expected to increase further throughout the year.
Power plants are using crude — although only those crudes with low sulphur content — fuel oil and liquefied natural gas (LNG) for electricity power-generation. Moreover, driven by increases in mileage and the number of vehicles, as a result of government incentives, transportation fuel consumption increased as well. Finally, kerosene and jet fuel consumption rose also for the first time in the last 12 months.
In South Korea, the use of oil in January decreased by 0.9% y-o-y; strong declines in residual fuel oil, jet fuel and gasoline were partly offset by increasing naphtha, liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) and gasoline requirements. The decline in oil use was attributed mostly to economic activity.
OECD Pacific oil consumption grew by 0.1 mb/d during 2011. Demand is expected to rise again in 2012, by 0.16 mb/d, while the bulk of the increase will result from direct crude/fuel oil burning for electricity-generation and substitution for nuclear plants in Japan. Driven by strong tax incentives and subsidies, Japanese auto sales continued to rise strongly in March, by a remarkable 78%. This trend has been seen for the past five months. Japanese auto demand is expected to rise sharply this year, partly due to higher sales in tsunami-hit areas, where thousands of cars were destroyed, and as a result of generous government efforts to stimulate demand. The incentives especially favour energy-efficient and high-tech vehicles. South Korean domestic car sales fell by 9.8% y-o-y, as a result of lower industrial demand. Nevertheless, the country’s auto exports rose by a strong 17% during February.