Japan's crude oil imports fell sharply in March to their lowest monthly level since 2013, as tensions in the Middle East lingered on to disrupt energy flows, Japanese media, The Nikkei, reported on Friday.
The report said statistics from Kpler, a data and analytics platform, showed that Japan imported 52.03 million barrels of crude oil in March, down roughly 30 percent from the previous month. The Nikkei said Kpler's figure also demonstrated that Japan's crude oil imports highly depended on producers in the Gulf region in March.
Oil imports from Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait accounted for 54 percent, 35 percent and 4 percent, respectively, of the total in March, bringing Asia's third largest economy's overall reliance on the Middle East to 96 percent.
As most of the crude arriving in March had already been shipped before the U.S. and Israeli attacks on Iran, imports are expected to decline even further in April. Kpler forecast Japan's crude imports for April will fall to 42.15 million barrels, dropping around 41 percent from February.
Imports of refined petroleum products, such as gasoline and naphtha, are also shrinking. Kpler said imports of those products were projected to fall by about 30 percent month on month.
In light of mounting supply pressure, Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi said on Thursday that the government does not rule out calling on the public to save electricity and fuel.
Japan's crude oil imports fall to monthly lowest
The threat of the barrier lake formed after Wednesday's catastrophic mudslide at the Gyirong Port, a major China-Nepal land border crossing in southwest China's Xizang Autonomous Region, continues to subside, with the lake's size steadily shrinking, according to an on-site monitoring team.
In the wake of the disaster, which has claimed at least seven lives and left more than 550 others missing in Gyirong, China Anneng -- a state-owned engineering and rescue enterprise -- has deployed teams to the disaster zone to support the search and rescue operations.
One of the teams tasked with monitoring the barrier lake, which sits over 10 kilometers upstream from the port, said real-time surveillance footage showed the lake was continuing to drain out.
"Our task today is to find a stable monitoring point on the opposite bank and install our detection equipment there to monitor the displacement of the landslide body and guard against the risks of a secondary collapse," said Chen Hanxiao, a member of the monitoring team from the Lhasa base of China Anneng.
The 15-member monitoring team have brought with it drones, satellite stations, and communication gear.
"A comparison of today's imagery with yesterday's shows that the water level here has dropped by about one-third. The receding water poses no further threat to the dam's structural integrity, buying valuable time for the rescue crews to carry out critical hazard mitigation work," said Hu Bo, head of the monitoring team.
However, Hu cautioned that despite the encouraging signs, the situation remains unpredictable given the region's complex glacial environment and changeable weather conditions. He stressed that real-time surveillance and data analysis are vital to assessing the barrier lake's stability and supporting follow-up operations.
The mudslide was triggered by a high-altitude glacier collapse on the Nepalese side, where the disaster had killed more than 620 people and left over 2,400 others missing, as of Saturday morning, according to the country's national disaster risk reduction and management authority.
Threat of barrier lake waning after massive mudslide near China-Nepal border
