Saudi Arabia and the UAE together possessed approximately 13.8mn barrels of crude oil at the end of 2017 in Japan’s semi-national stockpiles, a figure which is unchanged from the previous month, according to Reuters citing data from the Agency for Natural Resources and Energy.
The Japanese government provides free crude storage capacity to state-owned oil giants Saudi Aramco and the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC). In exchange for this, Japan gets a priority claim on the oil to use in emergencies and effectively regards the stock as a government supply.
The two oil firms can store close to 14.5mn barrels in the stockpile. No data was released regarding a breakdown on how much oil each company is storing.
Japan is the world’s largest importer of liquefied natural gas and additionally consumes around 4mn barrels of oil per day.
