Mitsubishi buys rare Vietnamese crude for Japan power plants -sources

FILE PHOTO: The logo of Mitsubishi Corp is pictured at its head office in Tokyo, Japan August 2, 2017. REUTERS/Kim Kyung-Hoon

SINGAPORE (Reuters) -Japan's Mitsubishi Corp has made an unusual purchase of Vietnamese low-sulphur crude loading in April that will be supplied to Japanese power plants, trade sources said on Monday.

The trading house purchased 300,000 barrels of Chim Sao crude from state oil marketer PV Oil at about $7.50 a barrel above dated Brent, they said.

Mitsubishi does not disclose individual transactions, a company spokeswoman said.

The purchase coincides with a period of elevated liquefied natural gas (LNG) prices amid tensions in Europe.

Global LNG supplies may tighten in the next few months and prices may surge again if Russian gas exports to Europe are disrupted because of the Ukraine crisis, analysts have said.

Japan, which is the world's second largest LNG importer, last burned large volumes of low-sulphur crude at utilities in the wake of the Fukushima nuclear crisis.

(Reporting by Florence Tan in Singapore and Kubo Nobuhiro in Tokyo; editing by Jason Neely and Alexander Smith)

(c) Copyright Thomson Reuters 2022. Click For Restrictions -
https://agency.reuters.com/en/copyright.html