TOKYO: State-owned Japan Oil, Gas and Metals National Corp (JOGMEC) on Friday bought about 1.89 million barrels or 300,000 kilolitres of Middle Eastern medium crude via tender for the government's Strategic Petroleum Reserves, a trade ministry official said.
The official did not comment on the sellers or crude grades.
JOGMEC had been seeking three lots of about 630,000 barrels each, with shipments to be delivered to the offshore Shirashima oil storage base in Fukuoka prefecture, southwestern Japan, between Oct. 1 and Nov. 20.
The purchase is partly to offset about 3.8 million barrels of heavy sour Khafji crude that the government sold from strategic reserves stored at Shirashima in April.
Khafji crude is produced from the shared Neutral Zone between Saudi Arabia and Kuwait.
In recent years, Japan's government has been trying to replace heavier crude in its national reserves with lighter crudes to reflect the growing share of light crudes in Japan's recent imports.
The sales are not related to any emergency release coordinated by the International Energy Agency. (Reuters)
