Japan’s new Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi told U.S. President Donald Trump during their meeting in Tokyo that it would be difficult to ban imports of Russian liquefied natural gas, two Japanese government officials told Reuters on Wednesday.
The officials asked that their names be withheld because the information was not public.
They said the issue of Russian liquefied natural gas came up during the leaders’ bilateral meeting on Tuesday, and Takaichi asked Trump to understand Japan’s energy needs.
According to the Nikkei business daily, Takaichi, who was elected last week as Japan’s first female prime minister, told Trump that if Japan stopped buying, it would only please China and Russia.
On the eve of Trump’s trip to Asia this week, the U.S. called on buyers of Russian energy supplies, including Japan, to halt imports and impose sanctions on two major oil exporters, Rosneft and Lukoil, to force Moscow to end the war in Ukraine.
According to Reuters, Russian supplies account for nearly 9 per cent of Japan’s total LNG imports, and Japan’s Mitsui and Mitsubishi own stakes in the Sakhalin-2 LNG project in Russia’s Far East.
Japan has increased its purchases of US LNG over the past few years in an attempt to diversify supply from its main supplier Australia and to prepare for the expiry of supply contracts with Russia’s Sakhalin-2 project.
Most supplies from Sakhalin-2 expire between 2028 and 2033. Replacing that gas will be expensive and lead to higher electricity prices, Japan’s industry minister said last week.
Japan buys less than 1 per cent of its oil imports from Russia under a sanctions exemption that ends in December, and the bulk of its oil supply is covered from the Middle East.