Japan puts on sale huge volumes of oil from national reserves

Japan has started selling oil from its strategic reserve, joining a number of other countries that hope for coordinated actions to ease pressure on the oil market.

Report informs with reference to Interfax that the Japanese Ministry of Trade has put up for sale the oil from the storage facilities in Shibushi with delivery from March to June.

At the first stage, it is planned to sell 100 thousand kiloliters (629 thousand barrels) of oil. The agency is monitoring the situation in the oil market and in the future may announce an additional release of reserves, Bloomberg reports, citing an informed source.

A month earlier, US President Joe Biden announced the intention to sell 50 million barrels of oil from the strategic oil reserve.

The United States began selling oil from their reserves in early December, and last week South Korea announced it would release 3.17 million barrels of oil and oil products from strategic reserves between January and March 2022.

Other parties to the agreement, including China, have not yet announced their steps.