TOKYO, Dec 14 (Reuters) - Japan's 10 major power utilities

used a record amount of natural gas for the month of November

last month to compensate for a lack of supply from nuclear power

plants, industry data showed on Friday.

The utilities combined burned 4.51 million tonnes of

liquefied natural gas (LNG) equivalent to generate power in

November, up 9.8 percent from a year earlier, the Federation of

Electric Power Companies said.

The 10 companies generated 72.35 billion kilowatt-hours of

electricity last month, up 0.4 percent from a year earlier, as

a pick-up in heating demand due to colder weather exceeded

nationwide power saving and a weak trend in demand from the

manufacturing sector. The data was in line with expectations for

a 0.6 percent increase in a Reuters projection.

Japan's nuclear power plant utilisation rate stood at 5.3

percent in November, compared with 5.2 percent in October.

Public opposition is preventing nuclear plant operators from

restarting reactors shut down for maintenance checks following

the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami, which triggered a

radiation crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.

All 50 working commercial reactors in Japan were offline for

nearly two months from early May this year.

Two reactors operated by Kansai Electric Power Co

resumed operations in July, but no timetable has been set for

the restart of other facilities as a new nuclear watchdog is

tightening safety regulations.

The previous record for natural gas use for the month of

November was 4.11 million tonnes in 2011, while the monthly

record stands at 5.23 million tonnes in January 2012.

Following is a table of total energy purchases and

consumption by the utilities for last month, according to the

federation's data (volumes of crude, fuel oil and naphtha in

barrels calculated by Reuters from kilolitres; LNG and coal in

tonnes):

Purchase Oct-12 Nov-11 Nov-12 yr/yr %

Coal 4,358,755 3,538,392 4,371,043 23.5

Fuel oil 8,035,150 6,276,390 7,274,185 15.9

Crude 7,045,909 6,202,969 5,473,076 -11.8

Total oil 15,081,060 12,479,359 12,747,261 2.1

LNG 4,470,709 4,509,371 4,614,576 2.3

Naphtha 0 0 0 n.a.

Consumption Oct-12 Nov-11 Nov-12 yr/yr %

Coal 3,799,575 4,137,973 3,968,728 -4.1

Fuel oil 7,386,156 6,104,679 6,990,962 14.5

Crude 6,761,340 7,050,576 7,549,163 7.1

Total oil 14,147,496 13,155,255 14,540,124 10.5

LNG 4,261,369 4,105,102 4,509,182 9.8

Naphtha 0 524 24 -95.4

(1 kilolitre = 6.2898 barrels)

(Reporting by Risa Maeda; Editing by Richard Pullin)

Keywords: UTILITIES JAPAN/ELECTRICITY

(risa.maeda@thomsonreuters.com)(81-3-6441-1856)(Reuters Messaging: risa.maeda.thomsonreuters.com@reuters.net)

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