May 31, 2011 [Reuters] - Repairs to a major oil terminal near Onahama port in northeast Japan damaged by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami are mostly complete and it will open to ocean-going ships in early June, Mitsubishi Corp said on Tuesday.
It said its unit Onahama Petroleum Co, the terminal’s operator, has already opened it to coastal vessels.
The terminal resumed operations as a shipment base for oil products to areas devastated by the quake on March 19 at the request of Fukushima prefecture government, initially using material stored before the quake, a company spokesman said.
The terminal is located 50 km (30 miles) south of Tokyo Electric Power Co’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, where engineers are still battling radiation leaks that began after the disaster knocked out reactor cooling systems.
It has storage capacity for 1.22 million kilolitres (7.69 million barrels) of crude oil and 281,000 kilolitres of C-fuel oil, and the users it supplies include thermal power plants, factories and gas stations.
