Japan's industry ministry said a tanker carrying Azerbaijani crude oil was set to arrive as early as Tuesday with the first cargo of oil received from Central Asia since the Iran war began in February.
Before the US-Israeli war with Iran broke out in late February, Japan relied on the Middle East for about 95 per cent of its crude oil imports. Iran's retaliatory shutting of most tanker traffic through the Strait of Hormuz has curtailed those shipments, requiring the country to seek alternative supply.
Japan's refineries were largely designed to process Persian Gulf crude to meet growing fuel demand during its economic expansion after World War Two.
Japan has imported oil from Azerbaijan before but the cargo arriving on Tuesday at Yokohama and bound for Eneos would be the first since the Iran war started, Narumi Hosokawa, deputy director-general for immediate crisis management at Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, told reporters.
Japan has also turned to the US, aside from other sources, and imported a crude oil cargo from Russia's Sakhalin-2 project that was exempted from sanctions.
Japan largely stopped importing crude oil from Russia and joined sanctions against it after Moscow's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
Japan has also opened its oil stockpiles to deal with the Middle East shortfall, releasing enough for 50 days of consumption on March 16, later adding around five days' worth of consumption from joint stockpiles and tapping another 20 days' worth from May 1.
As of May 8, Japan had 205 days' worth of oil consumption held in its stockpiles, of which 121 days are in public stockpiles, another 83 days in private stockpiles and one day left in joint stocks with oil producing nations, according to METI figures.
(Reporting by Jekaterina Golubkova; Editing by Chang-Ran Kim and Christian Schmollinger)
