Nippon Oil, PetroChina to expand cooperation

An agreement signed in March between Japan’s largest oil refiner, Nippon Oil, and Asia’s leading oil producer, PetroChina, to expand cooperation is a further sign that energy politics are beginning to override diplomatic tension between Japan and its neighbors, analysts say. It will help create a stable energy supply situation in Northeast Asia, Nippon Oil President Fumiaki Watari suggested. Wang Li Hua, president of China Oil, a PetroChina trading arm, called for a further expansion of cooperation between the two. The one-year agreement between the Japanese and Chinese partners requires the two companies to supply each other with products in which they have excess production capacities. The agreement with PetroChina is the latest in a series of moves by Nippon Oil to expand its presence in China, India and other emerging economies, including South Korea. According to Japanese media reports, Nippon Oil will refine 50,000 barrels per day of crude oil shipped by PetroChina from the Middle East into heavy and light productsl at the group’s six domestic refineries in Yokohama, Kurashiki and four other cities, and deliver the refined products to its Chinese partner. (March 12, 2007)