Japan’s Eneos Holdings Inc. will close one of its oil refineries next year due to falling domestic demand and the shift away from fossil fuels. Eneos will terminate operations at the 127,500 barrel-a-day plant in Wakayama prefecture, near Osaka, in October 2023, it said in a statement. A drop in consumption due to the pandemic and rising international competition, particularly from Asia, were given as reasons for the closure. “We cannot avoid population decline, the decarbonization trend and domestic demand for petroleum products falling,” Katsuyuki Ota, the company’s president, said at a press conference. The ... (full story)