Japan's Eneos shuts Sendai, Chiba refineries after quake

FILE PHOTO: The logo of Eneos Holdings and Eneos Corporation is displayed at the company headquarters in Tokyo, Japan August 20, 2020. REUTERS/Issei Kato

TOKYO (Reuters) -Japan's biggest refiner, Eneos Corp, shut its Sendai refinery including the 145,000 barrel-per-day crude distillation unit (CDU) after a magnitude 7.3 earthquake jolted Japan's northeast coast off Fukushima late on Wednesday, a company spokesperson said.

The strong quake activated a safety shutdown system at the Sendai refinery, the spokesperson said on Thursday.

The refiner, a unit of Eneos Holdings Inc, also shut its Chiba refinery, including the 129,000 bpd CDU, as well as one of the two CDUs in its Kawasaki refinery, due to an external power outage, the spokesperson said.

Eneos does not know when the facilities will be back online, the spokesperson said, adding that there has been no confirmed damage on its facilities.

Tens of thousands of Japanese households remained without power on Thursday morning after the quake struck shortly before midnight, throwing a swathe of northeastern Japan into darkness, severing key transportation links and killing four.

(Reporting by Yuka Obayashi; Editing by Jacqueline Wong)

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