UPDATE 2-Japan May power output falls 8.3 pct year/year

* Electricity generation down for 10th straight month

* Pace of drop considerably less than February's record

* Fuel oil, LNG burning falls to lowest since '06
(Recasts, adds details)

By Osamu Tsukimori

TOKYO, June 12 (Reuters) - Japan's 10 utilities generated 8.3
percent less electricity in May than in the same month last year,
a slightly narrower fall than in April, industry data showed on
Friday.

Demand for power has been sluggish since the onset of the
global financial crisis, with users such as large industrial
companies curbing their output.

The utilities generated 69.47 billion kilowatt-hours of
electricity in May, the 10th consecutive month of decline, the
Federation of Electric Power Companies of Japan said.

The pace of decline appears to have slowed, however, since
electricity generation plunged 15.8 percent in February from a
year earlier in the biggest decline on record.

In March, power generation fell 7.2 percent from a year
earlier.

Electricity generation in April totalled 68.96 billion
kilowatt-hours, down 8.5 percent from the same month the previous
year. [ID:nT169384]

The data showed fuel oil burning in May fell to 511,601
kilolitres (3.2 million barrels), the lowest since June 2006,
while LNG consumption fell to 2.9 million tonnes, the lowest
since May 2006.

Following is a table of total energy consumption and
purchases by the nation's 10 utilities for May, according to the
federation data. For details on TEPCO alone, see: [ID:nT35663]

Volumes of crude and fuel oil are in kilolitres; LNG and coal
are in tonnes. Year-on-year percentage changes in parentheses.

PURCHASES CONSUMPTION

Coal : 3,492,648 (-16%) 3,361,400 (-14%)

Fuel oil : 465,451 (-52%) 511,601 (-49%)

Crude oil: 205,110 (-75%) 203,378 (-74%)

LNG : 2,928,735 (-8%) 2,907,631 (-9%)

Naphtha : 0 0
(Reporting by Osamu Tsukimori; Editing by Joe Radford)