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Japanese power utility Tohoku Electric has decided to decommission the first reactor of its Onagawa nuclear power plant in the Miyagi prefecture (Japan), considering that the safety upgrades required to restart it would be too long and too expensive. Indeed, restricted space within the containment vessel would make the installation of safety equipment (power supply equipment, fire extinguishing equipment, and alternative water injection pumps) difficult.

In addition, the reactor has been deemed too small (498 MW net, 524 MW gross) and its remaining operating lifetime would be too short. The reactor was commissioned in June 1984 and has been idle since the Fukushima disaster in March 2011. It becomes the 10th operable Japanese reactor to be declared for decommissioning since 2011.

Tohoku Electric plans to restart the two other reactors at Onagawa (825 MW each) and its 1,100 MW Higashidori-1 reactor in the Aomori prefecture. The group expects to complete safety equipment works at Onagawa-2 and Higashidori-1 by March 2019 and March 2020, respectively. Onagawa-2 could be restarted by March 2021 and Higashidori-1 by March 2022 at the earliest. Tohoku Electric will also submit plans to restart Onagawa-3 to the Japanese Nuclear Regulation Authority (NRA).

Spanish energy group Iberdrola has updated its 2018-2022, which will focus on five main points: increasing regulated tariffs in its network division, building new capacities, reaching a higher output, achieving efficiency gains and consolidating Neoenergia, its subsidiary operating in Latin America.

The Ministry of Finance of South Korea has decided to temporarily reduce taxes on transport fuels by 15% to offset the 16-week rise in global oil prices on households and small businesses. The 15% cut will start from 6 November 2018 and will apply for 6 months, translating into a KRW 2,000bn (US$1.76bn) cut in tax revenues for the government.

Brazilian state-owned oil group Petrobras has started production on the eighth platform in the Lula offshore oil and gas field in the Santos basin of Brazil. The new platform will produce up to 150,000 bbl/d of oil and 6 mcm/d of gas, contributing to Petrobras’ plans to boost production from the coveted pre-salt oil play and to reach 1 mboe/d in 2019.

Vietnam’s state-owned oil and gas company PetroVietnam expects domestic crude oil production to fall by 10%/year until 2025, as reserves at existing fields are declining, while financial difficulties and tensions in the South China Sea prevented the group from boosting its exploration activities.

Saudi Arabia, through its state-owned oil company Saudi Aramco, is considering investing up to US$5bn in the Arctic LNG 2 project developed by Russian independent gas producer Novatek on the Gydan Peninsula in the Russian Arctic region.

The Danish transmission system operator (TSO) Energinet and its British counterpart National Grid have postponed the commissioning of their proposed 1.4 GW HVDC Viking Link Interconnector project linking Denmark and the United Kingdom by one year to 2023, citing delays in the approval process in the United Kingdom.