March 9, 2012:

Japan's top oil refiner, JX Nippon Oil & Energy Corp, said it resumed full operations of its 145,000 barrels per day (bpd) Sendai refinery on Friday, a move that will leave just one of the refineries damaged in last year's earthquake and tsunami yet to return to normal.  The remaining refinery is Cosmo Oil Co's 220,000 bpd Chiba refinery, east of Tokyo, which awaiting permission from the local government to restart the first of two crude distillation units.  Both it and the JX Sendai refinery had resumed partial operations at limited capacity in January after being restored following last year's disaster. JX Nippon, the wholly owned downstream oil subsidiary of JX Holdings Inc, operates eight refineries in Japan with total capacity of 1,625,500 bpd.

By Reuters