This is scheduled to begin on 26 March, so the Japanese government is mainly offering confirmation on the total figure. As a reminder, Japan had already released about 15 days’ worth of reserves from the private sector on 16 March. So, this just adds to that and the total will be roughly 80 million barrels.
And all of this also ties together with the IEA coordination to release a total of 400 million barrels globally.
The Japanese government confirms that the crude oil reserves release here will be from 11 locations nationwide.
As another reminder, Japan has a massive buffer in terms of oil in its reserve capacity heading into this crisis. They had around 254 days’ worth of oil and such a buffer looks to be well warranted in this kind of scenario now. But as a separate reminder, the IEA coordination rule does require countries to maintain a minimum of 90 days of net oil imports as emergency reserves.
