Japan's Cosmo Oil starts Yokkaichi CDU turnaround

TOKYO, Oct 1 (Reuters) - Japanese oil refiner Cosmo Oil Co

said itstarted a scheduled maintenance on the 90,000 barrel-per-day (bpd) No.5 crudedistillation unit (CDU) at its Yokkaichi refinery in western Japan on Monday.

The maintenance is set to last until Nov. 14, a company spokeswoman said.

Cosmo Oil, which operates four domestic refineries with a total capacity of635,000 barrels per day, has been unable to restart its biggest 220,000 bpdChiba refinery since May due in part to an asphalt leak from the refinery intothe sea. It hopes to restart refining operations at Chiba by the end of thisyear.

The shutdown of one of the two CDUs at the 175,000 bpd Yokkaichi refineryhas reduced the company's operating CDU capacity to 325,000 bpd.

(Reporting by Osamu Tsukimori; Editing by Prateek Chatterjee)

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Keywords: REFINERY OPERATIONS/COSMOOIL