Japan began releasing oil reserves to stabilise supplies threatened by the war between the US and Israel and Iran," nipponese media reported today. The decision of the Tokyo authorities aims to mitigate the effects of Iran's actual closure of the Ormuz Strait.
In the first phase, refineries and traders will benefit from private sector stocks covering 15 days of demand. State reserves will be launched in the next phase. A full of 80 million barrels will be placed on the market, equivalent to 45 days of home consumption. This is the largest intervention in the past of the nipponese reserve system, surpassing 1.8 times the action taken after the catastrophic earthquake in 2011.
Minoru Kihara's chief secretary announced that the government would "take all possible steps to guarantee unchangeable energy supplies, through global coordination and without excluding any options". He pointed out that the precedence was the smooth introduction of the released natural material into marketplace circulation in the face of the expected drop in imports at the end of March.
This is Japan's seventh reserve launch since the 1970s. Previously, the government reached for supplies in 2022 – after Russia invaded Ukraine. Tokyo's current step precedes the planned coordinated action of the global Energy Agency (IAE), whose members have committed to releasing a full of around 400 million barrels of oil.
Japan, importing more than 90% of oil from the mediate East, is delicate to roadblocks.
APW, PAP
