Japan does not plan to carry out additional releases of crude oil from its national reserves, a senior government official said on Monday, even as the G7 group announced on Friday a 100-million-barrel release from stocks.
“Japan has been releasing oil from reserves for some time now and there are no plans for a further release at this stage,” Minoru Kihara, Japan’s chief cabinet secretary, said on Monday, as carried by Reuters.
Japan is a member of the G7 group of the world’s most industrialized nations, which pledged on Friday the release of 100 million crude oil and diesel stocks from reserves to curb the diesel market deficit.
The G7 leaders vowed to implement their commitments with a coordinated release through the International Energy Agency (IEA) of 100 million barrels to begin immediately over four months, “including a frontloaded substantial diesel release within the first 20 days by G7 members and partners.”
“We will convene in the context of the IEA in the coming days to discuss the possibility of additional diesel releases as necessary,” the G7 leaders’ statement said, following days of pressure by the U.S. Administration on Europe’s biggest economies, Germany and France, to tap their emergency reserves and help lower record-high fuel prices.
Japan has done its part in releases from strategic reserves, it says.
Japan in the spring moved to release crude from its strategic reserves as part of an IEA-coordinated global effort to release 400 million barrels of crude and oil products.
Since the war in the Middle East began, resource-poor Japan has scrambled to secure crude oil supply from alternative sources as its dependence on crude from the Middle East passing through the Strait of Hormuz was more than 90% of all crude imports. Of the Middle Eastern supplies, about 70% typically arrived in Japan on tankers traveling through the Strait of Hormuz.
By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com
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