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OPEC's pact with Russia falls apart, sending oil into tailspin

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By Rania El Gamal, Alex Lawler and Olesya Astakhova

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Japan is a huge oil importer - so this drop in price will benefit them, TEPCO will undoubtedly benefit greatly and won't pass on the benefit to the consumer who will continue having to pay higher taxes in order to foot the bill for TEPCO's incompetencies and still pay higher prices for their Electricity consumption.

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@Zichi - how can you start off by saying Oil is only a small part, then go on to confirm what I stated that its 40%...perhaps you're confusing this Oil up & down thing, with the recent Electricity Futures market ? Maybe we're simply nixing terms - but what I'm trying to say is that that drop in the price of Crude Oil is simply beneficial to Japan.

I guess you can refer to the 2017 chart in :

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_Japan

Nearly all Corporations will purchase their Oil related requirements on the Futures market in advance. So the current drop won't immediately have a benefit, unless they switch to buying Spot, but that's unlikely to happen, (unless they have the Cash to do so), however the current Futures market will also have dropped as the "future" consumption outlook is now also uncertain.... so purchases of Oil in advance (say for the next 2 quarters ahead) will be cheaper now, than they were a few weeks ago. And potentially even cheaper ... if things go as they are going forward... so timing is everything. This impacts not TEPCO alone, but Airlines too... however they, with their fewer flights are also contributing to the decline in prices, which is partly why OPEC wished to prop up the prices by cutting production - though Russian sort of ignored them - throwing the proverbial spanner in the works. Supply & Demand in it's most basic form.

With that said, large players such as TEPCO have their own Commodity departments who activity trade these Futures Markets - if they've played the market right, then they can make a serious packet, if they've messed up - they can crush the Company. I'm sure you've seen such related news items over the past years.

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