SHIPPING
The port of Tokyo and other southern harbors were operating normally on Monday, though damage at northern ports was being assessed, industry officials said.
At least six Japanese seaports handling international trade, among them Hachinohe, Sendai, Ishinomaki and Onahama, sustained major damage and most are likely to be out of operations for months, an industry official said.
"These ports will need a lot of time until they can be fully restored," Tetsuya Hasegawa, operation manager at Heisei Shipping Agencies in Tokyo, told Reuters.
Japan had temporarily shut its ports on Friday after being hit by the worst earthquake in its recorded history, of magnitude 8.9, and a tsunami that followed.
On Monday, premiums for gold bars in Tokyo jumped to their highest level since February, standing at $1 an ounce versus spot London prices, compared to zero last week after inflation fears were sharpened by the earthquake in Japan, dealers said.
"The Japanese market is a bit tight on gasoline, so there are inflation risks. That's why Tokyo premiums are a bit higher," said a dealer at a bullion trading house in Tokyo.
Japan must act quickly to import more liquefied natural gas (LNG) and low-sulphur fuels to generate power at thermal plants and replace nuclear electricity supplies put out of action by the quake.
Significant power supplies in Japan, which ranks third in terms of oil imports and size of its economy, were crippled by the earthquake, causing the loss of an estimated 9,700 megawatts (MW) of nuclear, about a fifth of capacity, and 10,831 MW of thermal power generation.
Indonesia's state oil and gas firm Pertamina said shipments of liquefied natural gas (LNG) were running normally from its Bontang plant to major importer Japan.
The country's oil and gas watchdog, BPMigas, said 20 cargoes of liquefied natural gas (LNG) from Bontang were available for auction.
JX Nippon Oil & Energy Corp, which halted operations at its three refineries in Sendai, Kashima and Negishi after the quake, may start extinguishing a fire at an oil product shipping facility and storage tanks at its Sendai refinery later on Monday, a company spokesman said.JX resumed oil product shipments from its 270,000 barrels per day Negishi refinery south of Tokyo, the company said, though supply would be limited until the restart of the refinery was completed.
Japan is likely to turn to oil -- mainly low-sulphur fuel oil (LSFO) or low-sulphur crudes such as Indonesia's Duri -- as replacement power-generation fuel in the wake of the earthquake that resulted in the closure of several nuclear plants.
"Right now, it's not clear how much fuel oil they are going to buy, but it is quite certain that they will, and in large volumes. As of now, they have not come out to look for any low-sulphur fuel as yet," said a Singapore-based Japanese trader.
Barclays Capital estimates that replacing the lost power-generation capacity will require the equivalent of 204,000 barrels of oil per day (or about 30,000 tonnes), similar to a Very Large Crude Carrier (VLCC)-load of low-sulphur cargoes every eight days.
International oil prices will fall after the earthquake, but could rebound in one or two months, said Jiang Jiemin, the chairman of Asia's leading oil producer PetroChina, whose joint refinery in Japan had not been affected.
Asia's biggest thermal coal exporter, PT Bumi Resources, sees coal prices and demand going up in the medium term after the earthquake, company director Dileep Srivastava said, with the main catalysts being Japan's need to rebuild and the substitution of coal power for nuclear.
Japan is the top buyer of Indonesian coal, with Japanese customers making up 21 percent of Bumi's sales in 2011.
STEEL FIRMS STOP PRODUCTION ON OUTAGES
Steel prices in Asia are likely to rise after the earthquake and tsunami hit Japan's steel mills, constraining exports from the world's second largest producer, analysts say.
JFE said shipments from its 10 million tonnes per year Higashi Nihon plant near Tokyo had been virtually halted by a power outage.[ID:nTFD006676] JFE, which has total production capacity of about 32 million tonnes, resumed operations on Sunday of two blast furnaces at its Higashi Nihon plant, one of its two mainstay plants, which were idled after Friday's quake and tsunami. Shares of Australia-listed uranium miners, some of the world's biggest, tumbled on Monday as the struggle to prevent a nuclear catastrophe at the earthquake-damaged nuclear power generators stirred questions about the industry's future. [ID:nL3E7EE00B]
Rubber trading on the Tokyo Commodity Exchange halted as circuit breakers were hit when prices of several near-by contracts plunged at the open on concerns over the economy and demand stirred by the earthquake.
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