Japan in April imported the lowest volume of crude oil from the Middle East on record dating back to 1979 as the Iran war and the de facto closure of the Strait of Hormuz choked supply from the region.
Japan’s crude imports from the Middle East plummeted by 67.2% in April compared to the same month of 2025, provisional trade data from Japan’s Finance Ministry showed on Thursday. The April 2026 volume, estimated in Japan at 3.843 million kiloliters of crude oil, was the lowest since data collection began in 1979.
Japanese imports of LNG from the Middle East also slumped in April, by 76.1% from a year earlier, as the closed Strait of Hormuz trapped about 20% of daily global LNG flows, those out of Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.
Since the war in the Middle East began, Japan has scrambled to secure crude oil supply from alternative sources as its dependence on crude from the Middle East passing through Hormuz was more than 90% of all crude imports.
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The G-7 economy is also releasing crude from its strategic reserves as part of an IEA-coordinated global effort to release 400 million barrels of crude and oil products.
The ongoing oil stocks release, which is Japan’s biggest ever, is helping refiners increase throughput. So is alternative supply from producers outside the Middle East, including rare cargoes from Azerbaijan and Latin America.
Japan’s refinery utilization rates are rebounding in May as releases from petroleum reserves and arrivals of cargoes carrying non-Middle East crude are easing the oil supply crunch seen in March and most of April.
For the first time since March, refiners in Japan have boosted their average utilization rate to above 70% in the past three weeks, data from the Petroleum Association of Japan (PAJ) showed on Wednesday.
By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com
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