Japan's demand for liquefied natural gas for power generating purpose is expected to ascend promptly after the shutdown of nuclear power plants caused by quake, because most LNG-fired power plants in the country were still in normal operations.
As of Mar 17, Tokyo Electric Power Company's (TEPCO) subsidiary LNG-fired power plants only closed not more than 5% of generating capacity, showed latest data released by TEPCO.
The peak load shaving LNG-fired power plants are estimated to increase generation load by as high as 10-20% in the short term, according to a Japanese energy researcher.
Japan was now negotiating with LNG suppliers on purchasing more LNG from Asia-Pacific and the Middle East, as C1 reported earlier.
TEPCO has so far shut about 37% capacity of oil-fired power plants, the company's data also indicated. With the shutdown capacity restarted, TEPCO's oil-fired power plants would consume 0.5-1-mil mt per month (equivalent to 100-200kbd) of fuel oil or crude, C1 estimated.
TEPCO shut about 72% of nuclear power capacity after quake. In general, the company had about 30% of generating capacity closed.
Because of quake, power demand from the areas depending on power from TEPCO plunged around 30% to 30,000-35,000MW, with supply gap reaching bout 1,000MW.
TEPCO has a combined 64,450MW of generating capacity, of which LNG-fired, nuclear and oil-fired units take up 35%, 27% and 22%, respectively. The capacity of pumped storage power stations and coal-fired power plants accounts for 14% and 2%, respectively.
