NYK pays 15% rise in fuel price

NYK pays 15% rise in fuel price    Nippon Yusen Kabushiki Kaisha (NYK) said Thursday it bore a 14-percent rise in fuel price in April when compared to March.
   Japan’s largest shipping line said it will have to pay about Yen30 billion ($280 million) more in annual bunker oil costs if the price stays at the April level of $302.4 per ton, up more than 50 percent from a year earlier, Reuters reported.
   The high price of bunker fuel this year threatens to eat into the shipping companies’ record profits.
   NYK said recently that it expected its operating profit to decline about 4 percent to Yen155 billion ($1.5 billion) in the current fiscal year ending in March 2006. It assumed at the time that fuel prices would average $230 per ton, up 19 percent from the $193.8 it paid in the previous fiscal year, but still substantially below current fuel prices.
   For the Japanese group, a $1 swing in the price of bunker oil results in a Yen300 million increase or decrease in its annual profits.