South Korea has decided to supply more than 2 million barrels of oil products to Japan in order to plug an output gap after last week's killer earthquake.

Top Korean refiner, SK Energy would offer a helping hand to its neighbors by buying crude oil at the time when the nation is grappling with the loss of about a third of its 4.5 million barrel-per-day refining capacity.

Japanese refiners, trading firms and utilities are trying their best to secure alternative supplies of oil products and liquefied natural gas and at the same time steel mills are diverting metallurgical coal to other countries due to plant outages and port disruptions.

Sources suggest that this tragic event has caused the loss of around 9,700 megawatts (MW) of nuclear and 10,831 MW of thermal power generation and it is happening at the time when nuclear crisis is out of control as radiation levels surged yesterday.

The four Korean refiners have the production capacity of nearly 2.9 million bpd and they have declined to disclose the terms of the oil product supply deals with Japan.

Lee In-jae, Senior oil Analyst at KB Investment & Securities, said, “I think they will supply oil products at market prices, as it is more important for Japan to find the products than care for money”.