Saturday, March 12, 2011
Japanese PM declares atomic power emergency
2011-03-11 19:38:40
TOKYO, March 11 (Xinhua) -- Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan on Friday declared a state of atomic power emergency after an 8.8 magnitude earthquake hit Japan's northeastern Honshu island, but denied any radiation leaks.
The move aims to enable emergency measures in case of any atomic
disasters.Local authorities have called on a total of 3,000 residents living in the neighborhood of a nuclear power plant in Fukushima to evacuate, local media reported.
Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said some cooling functions were not working at the plant and one reactor cannot be cooled down.
He added the evacuation call is precautionary as no radiation leaks have so far been detected.
And the central government has sent senior officials to the plant to help cope with any emergency.
At a press conference earlier in the day, Edano said that residents near nuclear power plants do not need to take any special actions as no nuclear radiation leaks have been detected so far.
Separately, a fire broke out at a nuclear power plant in Miyagi Prefecture following the massive quake which has so far sent the death toll to 90.
Tohoku Electric Power Co. said that the fire started detected at a building housing the turbine at its Onagawa plant but denied any radiation leaks.
The industry ministry said that there were no immediate reports from monitoring posts of fires or other abnormalities near the nuclear plants.
According to the ministry, 11 nuclear reactors were automatically shut down at the Onagawa plant, Fukushima No. 1 and No. 2 plants and Tokai No. 2 plant.
Friday, March 11, 2011
Quake shuts Japan plants, seen setting back economy, BOJ offers help
* Disaster fresh blow to struggling economy; BOJ pledges support
* Power outages shut factories; all ports, some airports shut
* Yen, stocks fall, bonds jump on economic fallout concerns
(Adds more details on damage, death toll, Toyota plants)
By Osamu Tsukimori and Stanley White
TOKYO, March 11 (Reuters) - Auto plants, electronics factories and oil refineries shut across large parts of Japan on Friday after a powerful earthquake rocked the country, triggering a tsunami, buckling roads and knocking out power to millions of homes and businesses.
Several airports, including Tokyo's Narita, were closed and rail services halted. All of the country's ports were closed.
Electronics giant Sony Corp , one of the country's biggest exporters, shut six factories, Kyodo news agency reported, as air force jets roared toward the most heavily affected northeast coast to assess the damage from the 8.9 magnitude quake, the biggest to hit Japan in 140 years.
The Bank of Japan, which has been struggling to boost the anaemic economy, said it would do its utmost to ensure financial market stability as the yen and Japanese shares fell.
"There are car and semiconductor factories in northern Japan, so there will be some economic impact due to damage to factories," said Yasuo Yamamoto, senior economist at Mizuho Research Institute in Tokyo.
Japanese media reported at least six deaths and many injuries, with fires breaking out from Sendai city in northern Japan to Tokyo. A tsunami 10 metres high hit Sendai port but there were no immediate reports of damage.
The Miyagi prefecture and surrounding areas include major manufacturing and industrial zones, with many chemical and electronics plants. Television showed black smoke pouring out of an industrial area in Yokohama's Isogo area.
Toyota Motor Corp said it had halted production at a parts factory and two assembly plants in the area, while Nissan Motor Co , the country's second-largest automaker, stopped operations at four factories, media reported.
Two people were reported killed by a collapsing ceiling at a Honda Motor Co factory in Tochigi Prefecture, north of Tokyo, but no other details were immediately available.
The quake occurred as the economy was showing signs of reviving from a contraction in the final quarter of last year. The disaster raised the prospect of major disruptions for many key businesses, at least in the short term.
The yen fell as much as 0.3 percent against the dollar before recouping its losses, while Nikkei stock futures plunged nearly 5 percent at one point.
The disaster also weighed on markets elsewhere, pushing shares in European insurance companies down. Large reinsurers -- Swiss Re , Hannover Re and Munich Re -- were all down more than 4 percent.
The earthquake happened just before the Tokyo stock market closed.
"Stocks will probably fall on Monday, especially of those companies, that have factories in the affected areas, but on the whole the selloff will likely be short-lived," said Mitsuhsige Akino, a fund manager at Ichiyoshi Investment Management.
Bond futures surged on worries the widespread damage would put further pressure on the already sputtering economy, while the most active gold contract on the Tokyo Commodity Exchange, February 2012 , inched higher.
"We still don't know the full scale of the damage, but considering what happened after the earthquake in Kobe, this will certainly lead the government to compile an emergency budget. We can expect consumption to fall. This could temporarily pull down gross domestic product," Yamamoto said.
With Japanese interest rates already near zero, analysts said the central bank and the government had few options but to inject more money into the economy, even if it risked swelling the already bloated deficit.
"The extent of the damage is hard to tell but it seems devastating for the northern Japan economy. The government must act quickly to announce support packages and the central bank should pump more money into the economy," said Tsutomu Yamada, a market analysts at Kabu.com Securities.
The 1995 quake that devastated Kobe caused $100 billion in damage.
"The government would have to sell more bonds, but this is an emergency, so this can't be avoided," Yamamoto said.
"Given where the Bank of Japan's benchmark interest rate is now, they can't really lower rates. The BOJ will focus on providing liquidity, possibly by expanding market operations."
POWER PLANTS, REFINERIES SHUT
Hokuriku Electric Co said on Friday all of three reactors at its Onagawa nuclear plant in northern Japan shut down automatically after the quake, but no nuclear leaks were reported.
Electric Power Development (J-Power) also halted operations of its Isogo thermal power plant in Yokohama, Jiji reported.
Television reported a major fire at Cosmo Oil Co's Chiba refinery, east of Tokyo. JX Nippon Oil & Energy Corp, Japan's top refiner, halted operations at three refineries in Sendai, Kashima and Negishi, Jiji News said.
Japanese media reported a fire at JFE Holdings Inc's steel plant in Chiba. JFE, the world's fifth-largest steelmaker, said there was no major impact.
Primearth EV Energy Co Ltd, a joint venture between Panasonic Corp and Toyota making batteries for environmentally friendly vehicles, said its Miyagi battery factory had halted production because of power cuts. The extent of any damage was not clear, but a spokesman said it did not appear to be major. (Additional reporting by TOKYO bureau; Writing by Kim Coghill; Editing by Tomasz Janowski,sourced:Thomson Reuters)
Wednesday, January 12, 2011
Caltex Australia Shares Fall After Floods in Queensland Shut Oil Refinery
By Ben Sharples - Jan 12, 2011
Caltex Australia Ltd., the nation’s biggest oil refinery, dropped the most in more than six months after heavy rains forced the shutdown of a refinery that supplies about a third of Queensland state’s fuel needs.
Caltex Australia, half-owned by Chevron Corp., fell 5.7 percent, the most since June 25, to A$14.14 at the 4:10 p.m. close in Sydney. That compares with a 0.3 percent increase in the benchmark S&P/ASX 200 Index.
Flooding caused a “steam outage” at the Lytton refinery on Jan. 5, prompting an unscheduled shutdown, the Sydney-based company said in a statement. Partial output will resume tomorrow and progressively increase during the next 10 days, Caltex Australia said. Full operations are dependent on the Port of Brisbane, which has been closed, returning to normal, it said.
Lytton, the smaller of Caltex’s two refineries, is about 20 kilometers (12 miles) east of Brisbane and can process 109,000 barrels of crude a day. Australia’s third-largest city faces its worst deluge since 1893 and more than 75 percent of Queensland, an area bigger than Texas and California combined, has been declared a disaster zone.
The shutdown is expected to cost between A$5 million (A$4.9 million) and A$10 million, in 2011, the fuel producer said. Caltex Australia is doing maintenance at Lytton during the shutdown that had been scheduled for later in the year. Its biggest refinery is at Kurnell, south of Sydney.
‘Severe’ Currents, Debris
Across the river from Lytton, BP Plc’s Bulwer Island refinery is operating normally, Jamie Jardine, an Australian- based spokesman, said by phone. The refinery has a capacity of 88,000 barrels per day.
The Port of Brisbane, Australia’s third-busiest container harbor, is closed to maritime traffic and all ships have been removed because of severe currents and “huge amounts” of debris including boats and pontoons floating downstream, the port said on its website today.
The facility is likely to lose power because of the flooding of electrical substations, it said. Road access is open and is expected to remain passable during the flood. The harbor lies on the southern side of the Brisbane River, 24 kilometers from the city’s central business district.
Heavy rain this week caused a landslide near the city of Toowoomba, cutting part of the West Moreton rail network that carries coal to the port, Mark Hairsine, a spokesman for track manager QR National Ltd. said yesterday.
Queensland in November agreed to sell the Port of Brisbane to a group including Global Infrastructure Partners and Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, raising A$2.1 billion in cash to replace income lost to the financial crisis.
News via Bloomberg, Reporter Ben Sharples in Melbourne at bsharples@bloomberg.net
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